Foundation funds climate research using dripstones
The Foundation Herbert W. Franke has established a long-term cooperation agreement with the University of Innsbruck. It thus supports the Innsbruck Quaternary Research Group, which forms an international competence center for speleothem research at the Institute of Geology. Speleothems, dripstones in caves, are among the most important witnesses of natural climate change in the world. They store environmental and climatic information and preserve it well protected underground over very long periods of time. Over the course of this year, a new type of laboratory is to be opened at the Institute of Geology, which will enable the high-precision age determination of speleothem samples from caves.
“Herbert W. Franke is a lasting role model as a pioneer and visionary, because only precise age determination offers the key to learning from the Earth’s past,” says Prof. Christoph Spötl, Dean of the Faculty of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Innsbruck and founder of the Innsbruck Quaternary Research Group. “We would therefore like to thank the Foundation Herbert W. Franke for supporting the research and further development of this method.”
Susanne Päch, cair of the foundation, emphasizes: “The Foundation Herbert W. Franke supports research in the spirit of its namesake. Determining the age of speleothems and using them for climate research was a major concern for Herbert W. Franke throughout his life.”
As a doctoral student in theoretical physics and a young, active speleologist, Herbert W. Franke was fascinated by the idea of using precise physical methods to determine the age of speleothems in order to extract the information stored in these silent witnesses to the past over thousands of years for scientific purposes. In 1951, he was the first to explain the application of the then new radiocarbon analysis for speleothems on the basis of theoretical considerations and to suggest corresponding measurements. Franke thus became a pioneer of geochronology based on speleothems.
Decades later, this field of research achieved an international breakthrough with a further dating method based not on the radioactive decay of carbon but on the trace element thorium. This now makes it possible to determine much longer periods of time up to around 650,000 years in the past.