Research

Wolf Dieter Blümel is broadly experienced in desert and polar research, in geomorphology and landscape history, in palaeoclimatology and (palaeo)environmental analysis. He gathered his experiences in the universitary Institutes of Geography in Karlsruhe and Stuttgart, where he was appointed in 1987 to a professorship for Physical Geography and director of the institute. Different research projects led into various deserts and semiarid ecosystems of all continents as well as into both polar regions. Within the years 1989 – 1992 Wolf Dieter Blümel coordinated, organized and led the interdisciplinary and internationally composed “Geoscientific Spitsbergen-Expedition (SPE 90-92)” to the high Arctic. In total, 150 scientists engaged in 18 different research projects joint the three field campaigns. Most recent investigations attend to potential causal coherences between climatic fluctuations of the last millennia / centuries and developments in cultural history.