Thomas Scholten

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thomas Scholten (2018)

Thomas Scholten (born November 21, 1960 in Rheine / Westphalia ) is a soil scientist and physical geographer at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen and director of the Institute of Geography. His research is devoted to the development and protection of soils, the understanding of soil erosion-controlling and soil-ecological processes, and the formation and change of landscapes. In the course of his career he held positions at the Westphalian Wilhelms University of Münster , the Justus Liebig University of Gießen and the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena . From 2012 to 2015 he was President of the German Soil Science Society . Since 2016 he has been a full member of Acatech, the German Academy of Science and Engineering .

Life

After graduating from high school in 1979, Thomas Scholten initially worked as a technician in church care for the elderly and as a machine operator in the packaging industry. In 1985 he began studying physical geography, geology and mineralogy at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster. After graduating in 1990 in the field of landscape ecology on the subject of "Precipitation deposition in two beech forest stands and the effects on soil and stand" with Oskar Wilfrid Bach and Karl-Friedrich Schreiber , he received his dissertation in 1997 with the dissertation "Genesis and susceptibility to erosion of soil-saprolite complexes from crystal- lingesteinen in Swaziland, Southern Africa ”in soil science with Peter Felix-Henningsen for Dr. rer. nat. PhD. In 2002, he completed his habilitation at the Justus Liebig University in Gießen on the subject of “Distribution systematics and properties of Pleistocene periglacial layers in German low mountain ranges” and the Venia Legendi for the subjects “Soil Science” and “Physical Geography”. Also in 2002 he was offered the professorship for "Physical Geography with a Focus on Soil Science" at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, where he still works in an advisory capacity on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Faculty of Chemical and Geosciences. In 2005 Thomas Scholten accepted the professorship for soil science and geomorphology at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, which he still holds today.

plant

Based on his dissertation on soil erosion and its interaction with chemical deep weathering ( saprolitization ) in southern Africa and his habilitation on the spatial distribution of periglacial layers in low mountain ranges, there are always questions about the processes of the spatial arrangement of soils and their properties and functions for humans that drive Thomas Scholten. He was one of the first to describe the systematic spread of solifluction ceilings in low mountain ranges across the board and to predict them based on digital surface models for large landscapes. This was followed by significant work on the geostatistical analysis of soil distribution within the framework of the Collaborative Research Center of the German Research Foundation (DFG) SFB 299 "Land Use Concepts for Peripheral Regions" at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen. Here Thomas Scholten used machine learning methods for digital soil mapping (Digital Soil Mapping, DSM) for the first time in German soil science in the 1990s . Since 2018 the member of the Cluster of Excellence "Machine Learning: New Perspectives for Science" at the University of Tübingen, with the aim of opening up the potential of machine learning for science and understanding the changes this entails for the scientific approach becomes.

Just as the soil works at the interface between atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere, the interdisciplinary nature of research is a priority for Thomas Scholten. This is expressed in a special way in the SFB 1070 "Resource Cultures ", which he leads together with Martin Bartelheim and which focuses on questions about the emergence, stability and decline of cultures around the world at the interface of geosciences, archeology and anthropology.

Further activities in large interdisciplinary research groups focus on questions about the role of soils for biodiversity and ecosystem functions in forest ecosystems within the framework of the research group of the DFG FOR891 "BEF China: Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in subtropical forests", the priority program (SPP) of the DFG SPP 1158/8 "Antarctic Research with Comparative Investigations in Arctic Ice Areas" on the topic of soil genesis under extreme conditions and in SPP 1803 "EarthShape", where he worked with geomicrobiologists from the Helmholtz Center Potsdam - German GeoForschungsZentrum GFZ and following on from fundamental work as part of his dissertation, investigates soil erosion on saprolitized granitoid rocks and their interactions with geomicrobiological processes along a climate sequence in the Chilean coastal cordillera.

Thomas Scholten has published internationally, with over 5,000 citations of his 180 peer-reviewed articles in pedological and geoscientific journals, book chapters and books.

further activities

  • Co-speaker of the Collaborative Research Center SFB1070 Resource Cultures (since 2017)
  • Member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering Acatech (since 2016)
  • Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of BonaRes (soil as a natural resource) at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research UFZ (since 2015)
  • Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the German Research Center for Geosciences GFZ (2013 - 2019)
  • President of the German Soil Science Society (2012 - 2015)
  • Editor of the Journal of Plant Nutrition and Soil Science JPNSS (since 2012)
  • Speaker of the BMBF joint project YANGTZE GEO (2008 - 2015)
  • Member of the Presidium of the European Society for Soil Conservation ESSC (since 2004)
  • Various awards and prizes for scientific papers and posters in the fields of soil erosion and pedometry (most recently at Pedometrics 2017)

Fonts (selection)

  • Scholten, T. Genesis and susceptibility to erosion of soil-saprolite complexes from crystalline rocks in Swaziland. Boden und Landschaft 15, 195 pp., ISBN 3-931789-14-4 (1997)
  • Scholten, T., Behrens, T., Felix-Henningsen, P. Modeling geo-spatial soil properties in mid-altitude landscapes. In Belward, A., Binaghi, E., Brivio, PA, Lanzarone, GA, Tosi, G. (eds.). Geo-spatial Knowledge Processing for Natural Resource Management , Varese, Italy, 324 - 328 (2001)
  • Scholten, T. Distribution system and properties of Pleistocene periglacial layers in German low mountain ranges. Relief, Boden, Paläoklima 19, Borntraeger, 154 S., ISBN 3-443-09019-2 (2003)
  • Behrens, T., Scholten, T. Digital soil mapping in Germany - a review. J. Plant Nutr. Soil Sci. 169/3, 434-443 (2006)
  • Don, A., Schumacher, J., Scherer-Lorenzen, M., Scholten, T., Schulze, E.-D. Spatial and vertical variation of soil carbon at two grassland sites - implications for measuring soil carbon stocks. Geoderma 141, 272 - 282 (2007), doi: 10.1016 / j.geoderma.2007.06.003
  • Baumann, F., He, J.-S., Schmidt, K., Kühn, P., Scholten, T. Pedogenesis, permafrost, and soil moisture as controlling factors for soil nitrogen and carbon contents across the Tibetan Plateau. Global Change Biology 15, 3001 - 3017 (2009), doi: 10.1111 / j.1365-2486.2009.01953.x
  • Bruelheide, H., Böhnke, M., Both, S., Fang, T., Assmann, T., Baruffol, M., Bauhus, J., Buscot, F., Chen, X.-Y., Ding, B.-Y., Durka, W., Erfmeier, A., Fischer, M., Geißler, C., Guo, D., Guo, L.-D., Härdtle, W., He, J.-S ., Hector, A., Kröber, W., Kühn, P., Lang, AC, Nadrowski, K., Pei, KQ, Scherer-Lorenzen, M., Shi, XZ, Scholten, T., Schuldt, A. , Trogisch, S., von Oheimb, G., Welk, E., Wirth, C., Wu, Y.-T., Yang, XF, Zeng, XQ, Zhang, SR, Zhou, HZ, Ma, KP, Schmid, B. Community assembly during secondary forest succession in a Chinese subtropical forest. Ecological Monographs 81 (1), 25-41 (2011), doi: 10.1890 / 09-2172.1
  • Scholten, T., Geißler, C., Goc, J., Kühn, P., Wiegand, C. A new splash cup to measure the erosion potential of rainfall under vegetation. J. Plant Nutr. Soil Sci. 174, 596 - 601 (2011), doi: 10.1002 / jpln.201000349
  • Harter, J., Krause, HM., Schuettler, S., Ruser, R., Fromme, M., Scholten, T., Kappler, A., Behrens. S., Linking N2O emissions from biochar-amended soil to the structure and function of the N-cycling microbial community. ISMEJ 8, 660 - 674 (2014), doi: 10.1038 / ismej.2013.160
  • Müller, M., Schickhoff, U., Böhner, J., Chaudhary, RP, Drollinger, S., Scholten. T. How do soil properties affect alpine treelines? General principles in a global perspective and novel findings from Rolwaling Himal, Nepal. Progress in Physical Geography 40 (1), 135-160 (2016), doi: 10.1177 / 0309133315615802
  • Pei ZQ, Eichenberg D, Purschke O, Li Y, von Oheimb G, Kröber W, Bruelheide H, Kühn P, Scholten T, Buscot F, Gutknecht JLM. Soil and tree species traits both shape soil microbial communities during early growth of Chinese subtropical forests. Soil Biology and Biochemistry 96, 180-190 (2016), doi: 10.1016 / j.soilbio.2016.02.004
  • Geng Yan, Baumann Frank, Song Chao, Zhang Mi, Shi Yue, Kühn Peter, Scholten Thomas, He Jin-Sheng. Increasing temperature reduces the coupling between available nitrogen and phosphorus in soils of Chinese grasslands. Scientific Reports 7: 43524 (2017), doi: 10.1038 / srep43524
  • Sizhong Yang, Susanne Liebner, Matthias Winkel, Mashal Alawi, Fabian Horn, Corina Dörfer, Julien Ollivier, Jinsheng He, Huijun Jin, Peter Kühn, Michael Schloter, Thomas Scholten, Dirk Wagner. In-depth analysis of core methanogenic communities from high elevation permafrost-affected wetlands. Soil Biology and Biochemistry 111, 66 - 77 (2017), doi: 10.1016 / j.soilbio.2017.03.007
  • Thomas Scholten, Philipp Goebes, Peter Kühn, Steffen Seitz, Thorsten Assmann, Jürgen Bauhus, Helge Bruelheide, Francois Buscot, Alexandra Erfmeier, Markus Fischer, Werner Härdtle, Jin-Sheng He, Keping Ma, Pascal A. Niklaus, Michael Scherer-Lorenzen , Bernhard Schmid, Xuezheng Shi, Zhengshan Song, Goddert von Oheimb, Christian Wirth, Tesfaye Wubet, Karsten Schmidt. On the combined effect of soil fertility and topography on tree growth in subtropical forest ecosystems - a study from SE China. J Plant Ecol 10 (1), 111-127 (2017), doi: 10.1093 / jpe / rtw065
  • Liu, X., Trogisch, S., He, J.-S., Niklaus, PA, Bruelheide, H., Tang, Z., Erfmeier, A., Scherer-Lorenzen, M., Pietsch, KA, Yang, B., Kühn, P., Scholten, T., Huang, Y., Wang, C., Staab, M., Leppert, KN, Wirth, C., Schmid, B., Ma, K. Tree diversity richness increases ecosystem carbon storage in subtropical forests. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 285: 20181240 (2018). doi: 10.1098 / rspb.2018.1240
  • Schuldt, A., Assmann, T., Brezzi, M., Buscot, F., Eichenberg, D., Gutknecht, J., Härdtle, W., He, JS., Klein, AM., Kühn, P., Liu, X., Ma, KP., Niklaus, PA., Pietsch, KA., Purahong, W., Scherer-Lorenzen, M., Schmid, B., Scholten, T., Staab, M., Tang, ZY ., Trogisch, S., von Oheimb, G., Wirth, C., Wubet, T., Zhu, CD., Bruelheide, H. (2018): Biodiversity across trophic levels drives multifunctionality in highly diverse forests. Nature Communications 9, 2989. doi: 10.1038 / s41467-018-05421-z
  • Huang, Y., Chen, Y., Castro-Izaguirre, N., Baruffol, M., Brezzi, M., Lang, A., Li, Y., Härdtle, W., von Oheimb, G., Yang, X., Liu, X., Pei, K., Both, S., Yang, Bo., Eichenberg, D., Assmann, T., Bauhus, J., Behrens, T., Buscot, F., Chen, XY., Chester, D., Ding, BY., Durka, W., Erfmeier, A., Fang, J., Fischer, M., Guo, LD., Guo, D., Gutknecht, JLM, He, JS ., He, CL., Hector, A., Hoenig, L., Hu, RJ., Klein, AM., Kühn, P., Liang, Y., Li, S., Michalski, S., Scherer-Lorenzen , M., Schmidt, K., Scholten, T., Schuldt, A., Shi, X., Tang, MZ., Tang, Z., Trogisch, S., Wirth, C., Wubet, T., Yu , M., Ju, XD., Zhang, Y., Zhang, S., Zhang, N., Zhou, HZ., Zhu, CD., Zhu, L., Bruelheide, H., Ma, K., Niklaus , PA, Schmid. B., Impacts of species richness on productivity in a large-scale subtropical forest experiment. Science 362/6410, 80 - 83. doi: 10.1126 / science.aat6405

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Scholten, Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Soil scientist, physical geographer at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and director of the Geographical Institute
DATE OF BIRTH November 21, 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH Rheine