24.04.2019 | During the current summer semester, the geoscientist Dr. Nils Moosdorf will take up the professorship for Coastal Hydrogeology at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at Kiel University. At the same time, he will continnue to head the working group on submarine groundwater discharge at ZMT. Nils Moosdorf will investigate the interface between groundwater and the ocean and analyse the effects of changes in the sensitive coastal system. In education, he will also address this interface and also teach about Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in the geosciences.
Within the scope of his professorship and his research work at ZMT, Moosdorf is not only focussing on groundwater analysis but also on the influences of groundwater on coastal ecosystems as for example changes in bacterial communities or effects on fishing and the social significance of coastal groundwater reserves. In tropical coastal areas, groundwater plays an important role in supplying the population with water. At the same time, more terrestrial groundwater flows into the seas and oceans than in temperate latitudes.
For his teaching and research activities, Nils Moosdorf can draw on years of experience from his studies in hydrogeology at the RWTH Aachen and his doctoral career at the TU Darmstadt and the University of Hamburg. At the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research in Bremen, he led a junior research group on submarine groundwater runoff in the tropics for five years. Nils Moosdorf's work on the role of groundwater on the coast and in the earth system is attracting national and international attention. In 2017 he was awarded the Hermann Credner Prize by the German Geological Society - Geological Association (DGGV).
"I am delighted that with the appointment of Nils Moosdorf we have been able to establish a new cooperation professorship together with the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel and could thus further strengthen the cooperation between the two institutions," said Professor Hildegard Westphal, Scientific Director of ZMT. “Nils Mossdorf is a scientist who crosses borders and who connects the studies of land and water across disciplinary boundaries. Nutrient transport with groundwater can influence marine ecosystems – especially in the tropics“, said Westphal. „Yet, this invisible connection underground is seldom studied in detail. Not many researchers are looking at the land and are thinking of the sea.“
This interdisciplinary research approach is also of particular strategic importance for the research focus Kiel Marine Science (KMS) and serves to intensify the connection between applied and marine research and teaching content at the Institute of Geosciences at Kiel University. The joint appointment follows the concept "Kiel University INTERFACES", with which the CAU dedicates itself to interdisciplinary and inter-institutional research, says Professor Ralph Schneider, Director of the Kiel Research Centre KMS.
On Wednesday, May 15th (4:15 pm), Nils Moosdorf is giving his habilitation lecture titled "Human impacts on the global water cycle". More information here.
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