Our focus in research and teaching is the analysis of organisms (ostracods, diatoms) as environmental and climate indicators, limnological, ecological and sedimentological methods as well as GIS-based environmental reconstructions. Organisms are aquired from limnic and marine sediments using drilling devices and sediment grabs. In the laboratory follows the microscopic identification of organisms, sediment description as well as sample preparation for trace element and stable isotope analysis.
Field-work in Germany and abroad is done using two rubber boats of different size (for example Honda T-35 AE with motor), two Uwitec corer (sediment-short core-sampler), two sediment grabs (Ekman grab), WTW multi-parameter probes, portable photometer (Winlap Dataline) in aquatic environments, as well as Wacker hammer and driving rods, Pürckhauer, rods and soft-head hammer in terrestrial environments.
Our institute possesses a laboratory for microscopic analysis, which is equipped with the research microscope Leica DM 5000 B, the high-performance light optical microscope Zeiss Imager M2 with reflected-light function and the camera AxioCam HRC.
For the analysis of macroscopic organisms eight high-resolution binocular microscopes (leica) with two integrated computer-aided high-performance cameras (CT 5 ProgRes from Jenoptic) are used.
The water- and sediment laboratory is used to process and analysis samples. Therefore, various devices are available, for example drying oven, muffle furnace, centrifuge and water bath.