News & events
The ESD Group seeks to make our research accessible to a wide variety of audiences - from our scientific collegues to the general public in Switzerland and world-wide. Find updates on upcoming seminars, conferences, and recent news items by navigating with the tabs on the left.
Future Geologists Explore Life at ETH
Future Geomorphologists visit earth sciences
Kantonsschule Chur Explores the Earth Sciences
High school students from the Kantonsschule Chur recently spent 3 days visiting the Geological Institute as part of a partnership with doctoral student Richard Ott and the European Subitop project. Richard regularly visits the class in Chur to teach topics in earth science and was eager to show the students more about ongoing research at ETH.
On the first day, the students learned about Switzerland's seismicity while going for a "ride" in the earthquake simulator, they met recent doctoral student Lukas Oesch who now works at NAGRA to learn about nuclear waste storage, and they visited the atomic mass spectrometer at Hönggerberg to explore methods in cosmogenic nuclide measurements.
During the second day, Richard led the students on a bike tour to discuss flooding risks, hydro-engineering, and how the city of Zürich prepares for future floods. The tour culminated with a drone flight to take photos for a 3D surface model that could be used to measure the geometry of the Sihl and predict potential discharge and flooding risks
On the final day, the students had a chance to try out a few different geoscience techniques. They used microscopes to look at a common type of plankton called Foraminifera and used their observations to reconstruct water depths of real ocean sediment samples. Next, Dr. Giuditta Fellin and Dr. Vincenzo Picotti helped them use the microscopes to look at thin sections of rock samples and make inferences about how and when the rocks formed. The students also had a chance to check out a sediment core taken from the depths of the Zürichsee and even use the raman spectroscopy lab to check the validity of their family's jewelry - we found a real diamond ring!
After three full days learning about geology and reasearch at ETH, we hope to see many of the students in the NO building as undergraduates soon!
Doctoral Retreat
Members of the ESD Group recently joined fellow doctoral students of the Department of Earth Sciences in the Black Forest, Germany to share ongoing research. Our own Erica Erlanger and Sascha Winterberg earned top honors, winning "Best Talk" and "Best Poster", respectively.
Fall Excursion
In late September, the ESD and Biogeoscience groups traveled south to the Italian Pô Plain. The groups discussed major ideas in source-to-sink transport dynamics and investigated a few sites for future coursework. Check out photos from the trip below:
Impressions
