Environmental and climatic changes have a major influence on the natural systems supporting human life. An important key to understanding natural and anthropogenic climate changes in the future is reliable information about the climatic changes during the last 500,000 years.

Lake sediments, loess sequences and river terrace deposits containing interbedded peat layers represent important climate archives, enabling high-resolution reconstruction of the climate in the past. In this focal research field, the structure, genesis and age of such continental deposits are analyzed in multidisciplinary studies.

Geophysical exploration methods have been developed and refined to simplify the identification of buried maar lakes. Reliably dated geological records of climate ("proxies") provide the data required for climate models. 14C, luminescence and uranium/thorium dating methods, as well as paleo-magnetic methods, are used to determine chronostratigraphic relationships.