Physical Geography

WELCOME

Hello and welcome to the homepage of the Institute of Geography’s section of physical geography at Universität Hamburg.

Today’s section of physical geography is the result of the reformation, consolidation and organizational fusion of Prof. Dr. Jürgen Böhner’s physical geography research group and the biogeography research group led by Professor Dr. Udo Schickhoff. This has enabled the section to focus its technical and methodological efforts within an international research network, and to significantly contribute to the profile accentuation of the Institute of Geography, the University Department of Earth Sciences, and the Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics, and Natural Sciences through its orientation towards modern system analysis, geoinformatics, and methodological competence. With research foci on regional climate and climate change, landscape ecological processes, and environmental dynamics, in particular processes of change in high mountain environments, the section covers important topical research fields and deals with trendsetting topics, highly compatible with existing climate and earth system research priorities in the university city of Hamburg.

The development and implementation of geoinformatic and geoscientific methods, models, and expert systems hold a special position in the section’s strategy. With the System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses (SAGA), which is one of the world’s leading IT platforms for geodata analysis and geoscientific modeling, Hamburg’s section of physical geography developed a feature unique among geoscientific research institutions in Middle Europe. With more than 300,000 academic users worldwide, SAGA has become one of the most popular university brands in the world.

The classes offered by the section are closely integrated into the curricula of all geography and earth science majors, the SICCS program, and the European UNIGIS module (Z_GlS Salzburg). Apart from the sub-disciplines of climatology, hydrology, geomorphology, biogeography, and landscape ecology, the methodological subjects of geoinformatics, GIS, and remote sensing are essential components of teaching offered by the section in order to provide all students and PhD candidates with currently required, competitive skills and qualification, thus optimally preparing them for jobs both in science and practice.

Our homepage features information on the classes offered by our faculty as well as overviews of the multifaceted current and past research and development activities conducted in the frame of national and international research projects and cooperations.

Working group Geosystems analysis

Working group Biogeography and Landscape ecology

Working Group HAREME

Working group Microplastic Research at CEN

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.