Jump directly to the page contents

Helmholtz Centre Potsdam – GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences

Earth in focus - Earth System Research for our Future

The GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences is the national research center for Earth sciences in Germany. Research at the GFZ focuses on the geosphere within the highly complex System Earth with its further subsystems, its interacting sub cycles, and its wide network of cause-and-effect chains. This we do in a close interdisciplinary collaboration with the related scientific disciplines physics, mathematics, chemistry, and biology as well as with the engineering sciences disciplines of rock mechanics, engineering hydrology and seismology. We are part of the Helmholtz Association and its Research Fields Earth and Environment and Renewable Energies.

The GFZ deals with the following research questions:

  • Earth System dynamics: How are linked processes steering the dynamics of the solid Earth and changes within the living space of Man?
  • Potential fields: What are the causes and consequences of changes within the gravity and geomagnetic fields of the Earth?
  • Earth surface processes: How is the Earth surface reacting to natural and anthropogenic impacts?
  • Natural hazards: How can we better predict and understand natural hazards, their dynamics, and their consequences?
  • Georesources: How can georesources and the geological subsurface be used in a sustainable way?

Our vision and mission

The future can only be secured by those who understand the System Earth and its interactions with Man: We develop a profound understanding of systems and processes of the solid Earth together with strategies and options for action to address global change and its regional impacts, to understand natural hazards and to minimize associated risks, as well as to assess the human impact on System Earth.

Our mission is to assess and understand relevant physical, chemical, and biological processes within the geosphere and to predict future developments. We integrate methods of Earth-observation with laboratory- and field-experiments, as well as with modelling approaches.

The GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences

 

GFZ in figures

1273

employees (as of Dec. 31, 2020)

96

million euros annual budget 2021 - of which 66 million euros from program funding & 30 million euros third-party funding.

News

  • High-rise buildings made of mushrooms, with cooling facades and vegetable gardens on the roof: Architecture must change to become more sustainable and climate-friendly, and solutions are coming from…

  • Earth & Environment

    The severe earthquake in Nepal at the end of April shifted the earth’s surface by several metres at many locations. These powerful forces arise from the convergence of two continental plates – and…

  • Earth & Environment

    Ten years ago a tsunami in the Indian Ocean claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. In the mean time, research scientists have constructed one of the most modern tsunami warning systems in the world.…

  • Information, Earth & Environment

    Nobody knows for sure what it is or where to find it: dark energy. Alongside dark matter, it is one of the greatest mysteries of astrophysics

  • Information, Earth & Environment

    East of Nuremberg researchers have drilled a hole in the earth that is more than nine kilometers long. Today the shaft is mainly used as a test laboratory for measuring instruments

  • Information

    Its field of application is diverse, yet very precisely defined. It helps to research the global climate and identifies rare raw materials - in an exacting manner and down to the single atom: the…

Contact

Helmholtz-Zentrum Potsdam - Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum GFZ

Telegrafenberg
14473 Potsdam

As curious as we are? Discover more.