Stratigraphy
Understanding rates of change is the most important part of understanding past and present changes in the broad field of earth sciences and, in particular, understanding past climatic and environmental changes recorded in our sedimentary archives.
Depending on the use of different time markers, a distinction is made between some of branches (e.g., lithostratigraphy, biostratigraphy, sequence stratigraphy, magnetostratigraphy, chemostratigraphy, cyclostratigraphy).
Stratigraphic correlation of sediments from the Molasse basin in Upper Austria (Hülscher et al., 2019):
The working group, "Paleontology and Stratigraphy" of the Institute of Earth Sciences, contributes to these efforts by integrating classical disciplines such as litho- biostratigraphy with modern astrochronological principles to place rock strata into the global stratigraphic framework. Our goal is to describe, sort, and correlate our geologic and thus paleoclimatic archives in space and time. With these efforts, we can define time ranges, sediment accumulation rates, pinpoint the timing and duration of important climatic changes in the past. We use this research to better predict the impact of present and future climate change.