Digital geoscientific maps: A priority program of the German Society for the Advancement of Scientific Research

In October 1984, the German Society for the Advancement of Scientific Research (DFG) began a 5-year Priority Program to develop a new general concept for computer-assisted field work and construction, production, and evaluation of geoscientific maps with contents either from a single geodiscipline or from various disciplines, as a part of a future geoscientific information system.     

Die Scheelitlagerstätte Sangdong (Südkorea), Ihre Genese und ihr geologisch-tektonischer Rahmen

Geological investigations of the authors both on the surface and in the mine of Sangdong scheelite deposit (South Korea) yielded the following results: Sangdong is not a pure contact deposit assumed so far. Selective mineralisation of the Cambrian Myobong Beds gave rise to the formation of skarn rocks during a silicatepneumatolytic phase, while during a subsequent pneumatolytic-katathermal transitional stage as well as during a hypothermal stage those skarn rocks were penetrated by scheelitebearing quartz-veins. With the hypothermal activity the formation of scheelite reached its peak, although scheelite was ubiquitous throughout the pneumatolytic and hydrothermal phases of mineralisation. Indications of hypogene zoning of primary mineralisation can be observed in the mine. Certain relations exist between scheelite mineralisation on the one hand, and tectonics, permeability and chemical properties of the country rock on the other hand. The scheelite deposit of Sangdong is part of a tin-tungstenprovince the orebringer of which is as yet unknown. The mineralisation, however, had taken place presumably in connection with granite intrusions at the boundary Jurassic/Cretaceous, judging from the present knowledge of the regional geology.     

Projection of fire potential to future climate scenarios in the Alpine area: some methodological considerations

In Europe, wildfires are an issue not only for the Mediterranean area, but also in the Alpine regions in terms of increasing number of events and severity. In this study we evaluate the impact of climate change on the fire potential in the Alps in the past and in future scenarios. The Fine Fuel Moisture Code (FFMC) of the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System, which successfully distinguishes among recorded fire/no fire events, is applied to projections of Regional Climate Models (RCMs) calculated on the SRES scenario A1B. We compare two different techniques: 1) a single model run of the COSMO-CLM RCM at 18 km resolution, and 2) a combination of 25-km resolution RCMs from the ENSEMBLES project, combined with the Multimodel SuperEnsemble technique and a new probabilistic Multimodel SuperEnsemble Dressing. The single-model RCM allows for a greater coherence among the input parameters, while the Multimodel techniques permit to reduce the model biases and to downscale to a higher resolution where long term records of observations are available. The projected changes with the Multimodel in the scenario give an estimation of increasing wildfire potential in the mid XXI century. In particular the frequency of severe wildfire potential days is shown to increase dramatically. The single (independent) COSMO model gives a weaker signal and in some regions of the study area the predicted changes are opposite to the ones by the Multimodel. This is mainly due to increasing precipitation amounts simulated especially in the northern parts of the Alps. However, there are also some individual models included in the Multimodel ensemble that show a similar signal. This confirms the ambiguity of any impact study based on a single climate model due to the uncertainty of the projections of the climate models.