Peter Kühn

University of Tübingen | EKU Tübingen · Department of Geosciences

Nutrient cycling in alpine grasslands is susceptible to climate change and anthropogenic activities, which can affect soil phosphorus (P) availability. Despite the crucial role of soil P availability in maintaining stability and productivity of grassland ecosystems, limited research has been conducted on the effects of nitrogen (N) addition and win...

Chernozems/Phaeozems are important agricultural resources and have been intensively used for millennia. However, their origin and age are still controversial. In Europe, the westernmost widespread Chernozem/Phaeozem area is located in Central Germany. In contrast to other German regions with anthropogenic Chernozems/Phaeozems, their natural origin...

This supporting material to the article Suchodoletz et al. (2023): "Deciphering timing and rates of Central German Chernozem/ Phaeozem formation through high resolution single‑grain luminescence dating" contains a table with the apparent and effective soil reworking rates derived from the luminescence samples.

Ice wedge polygons on steep slopes have generally been described as being covered by periglacial sediments and, typically, the active layer on slopes becomes mobile during thaw periods, which can lead to solifluction. In West Greenland close to the ice margin, however, the active layer and ice wedge polygons are stable despite their occurrence on s...

Ridge and furrow fields are land-use-related surface structures that are widespread in Europe and represent a geomorphological key signature of the Anthropocene. Previous research has identified various reasons for the intentional and unintentional formation of these structures, such as the use of a mouldboard plough, soil improvement and drainage....

Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) composed of cyanobacteria, bacteria, algae, fungi, lichens, and bryophytes stabilize the soil surface. This effect has mainly been studied in arid climates, where biocrusts constitute the main biological agent to stabilize and connect soil aggregates. Besides, biocrusts are an integral part of the soil surface und...

Am 28. und 29. Oktober 2016 trafen sich auf dem Tübinger Schloss Vertreterinnen und Vertreter der Ur- und Frühgeschichtlichen Archäologie, Archäobotanik, Klassischen Archäologie, Physischen Geographie/Bodenkunde, Humangeographie, Ethnologie und Geschichtswissenschaft, um in einen interdisziplinären Dialog über „Gunst/Ungunst – Nutzung und Wahrnehmu...

Looking at soils from the perspective of an environmental scientist or agronomist might neglect various dimensions of valuation that can be attributed to soils. Especially social and cultural connoted values including ecosystem services cannot always be measured in terms of scientific values or classified as soil types or soil qualities in a modern...

Soil bacteria play a fundamental role in pedogenesis. However, knowledge about both the impact of climate and slope aspects on microbial communities and the consequences of these items in pedogenesis is lacking. Therefore, soil-bacterial communities from four sites and two different aspects along the climate gradient of the Chilean Coastal Cordille...

Soil phosphorus (P) is essential for plant growth and influences biological processes. Determining the amounts of available P to plants has been challenging, and many different approaches exist. The traditional Hedley sequential extraction method and its subsequent modification are applied to determine different soil P forms, which is critical for...

Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) composed of cyanobacteria, bacteria, algae, fungi, lichens, and bryophytes stabilize the soil surface. This effect has mainly been studied in arid climates, where biocrusts constitute the main biological agent to stabilize and connect soil aggregates. Besides, biocrusts are an integral part of the soil surface und...

Im Jahr 2016 wurde bei Rettungsgrabungen im Bereich eines mittelbronzezeitlichen Siedlungsareals bei Engen-Anselfingen (Lkr. Konstanz/D) ein knapp 2 kg schweres Gusskuchenfragment geborgen. Nachdem in der Frühbronzezeit in Mitteleuropa noch elaboriertere, ring- und spangenförmige Kupferbarren zirkulierten, wurde ab der Mittelbronzezeit vermehrt mit...

We review and contrast three frameworks for analyzing human-land interactions in the Holocene: the traditional concept of favored and disfavored landscapes, the new concept of ResourceCultures from researchers at University of Tübingen, and complex adaptive systems, which is a well-established contemporary approach in interdisciplinary research. Fo...

Bronze Age Palaeoecology of the Hegau

This paper aims to reconstruct Middle Bronze Age (MBA) land use practices in the north-western Alpine foreland (SW Germany, Hegau). We used a multi-proxy approach including the biogeochemical proxies from colluvial deposits in the surrounding of the well-documented settlement site of Anselfingen and offsite pollen data from two peat bogs. This appr...

Colluvial deposits are considered as sedimentary archives for the reconstruction of the sedimentation and climate history, past pedogenesis and phases of land use. However, the human contribution to the formation of colluvial deposits is mainly based on assumptions derived from the local chronostratigraphy and archaeology. For this reason, there is...

Compared to the 1970s, the edge of the Ecology Glacier on King George Island, maritime Antarctica, is positioned more than 500 m inwards, exposing a large area of new terrain to soil-forming processes and periglacial climate for more than 40 years. To gain information on the state of soil formation and its interplay with microbial activity, three h...

The soil organic carbon (SOC) pool of the Northern Hemisphere contains about half of the global SOC stored in soils. As the Arctic is exceptionally sensitive to global warming, temperature rise and prolonged summer lead to deeper thawing of permafrost‐affected soils and might contribute to increasing greenhouse gas emissions progressively. To asses...

As limited resources, soils are the largest terrestrial sinks of organic carbon. In this respect, 3D modelling of soil organic carbon (SOC) offers substantial improvements in the understanding and assessment of the spatial distribution of SOC stocks. Previous three-dimensional SOC modelling approaches usually averaged each depth increment for multi...

Connecting society to the ecosystem is crucial for the resilience of social-ecological systems. On the local scale, some citizens actively engage with the ecosystem in urban green spaces such as gardens. Therefore, the study investigates allotment gardens in two regions in industrialized SW-Germany through a mixed method approach consisting of ques...

The present study combines archaeological data with archaeopedological data from colluvial deposits to infer Neolithic settlement dynamics between the Baar region, the Black Forest and the Swabian Jura. A review of the state of archaeological research and an analysis of the processes leading to the discovery of the Neolithic sites and thereby the f...

James Ross Island (JRI) offers the exceptional opportunity to study microbial-driven pedogenesis without the influence of vascular plants or faunal activities (e.g., penguin rookeries). In this study, two soil profiles from JRI (one at Santa Martha Cove – SMC, and another at Brandy Bay – BB) were investigated, in order to gain information about the...

Soil properties and terrain attributes are of great interest to explain and model plant productivity and community assembly (hereafter P&CA). Many studies only sample surface soils, and may therefore miss important variation of deeper soil levels. We aimed to identify a critical soil depth in which the relationships between soil properties and P&CA...

James Ross Island (JRI) offers the exceptional opportunity to study pedogenesis without the influence of vascular plants or faunal activities (e.g. penguin rookeries) in a landscape marking the transition from maritime to continental Antarctica. Here, primarily microbial communities control soil biological processes and affect soil chemical and phy...

Deconvoluting the relative contributions made by specific biotic and abiotic drivers to soil fungal community compositions facilitates predictions about the functional responses of ecosystems to environmental changes, such as losses of plant diversity, but it is hindered by the complex interactions involved. Experimental assembly of tree species al...

Biodiversity experiments have shown that species loss reduces ecosystem functioning in grassland. To test whether this result can be extrapolated to forests, the main contributors to terrestrial primary productivity, requires large-scale experiments.We manipulated tree species richness by planting more than 150,000 trees in plots with 1 to 16 speci...

Some previous studies showed that the formation of several deep dark humus-rich topsoils in Northern Europe was strongly influenced by the application of different organic materials by anthropogenic activities in former times. Such topsoils classified as plaggic Anthrosols also occurred in the Jæren region in SW Norway. However, source material and...

Leaf wax-derived long-chain n-alkanes are increasingly used for paleovegetation reconstructions, but have hardly been applied to fluvial sediments so far. However, such analyses could significantly enhance knowledge of the former vegetation in many regions devoid of non-fluvial sediment archives. Therefore, this exemplary study investigates potenti...

When one looks at the global distribution of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks, a few patterns emerge (Figure 3.1). The SOC density is not uniformly distributed and nitrogen (N) is strongly associated with it. Hot spots of SOC density exist primarily in the northern higher latitudes and again in smaller pockets in the equatorial regions. But even th...

Forest ecosystems are an integral component of the global carbon cycle as they take up and release large amounts of C over short time periods (C flux) or accumulate it over longer time periods (C stock). However, there remains uncertainty about whether and in which direction C fluxes and in particular C stocks may differ between forests of high ver...

Soil chronosequences have been widely used to quantify soil formation and weathering rates, but little attention has been paid to determine soil redistribution rates (erosion and deposition) and the stabilisation of moraines over time. We therefore selected a sequence of moraines in the Wind River Range (WRR-Central Rocky Mountains) to study these...

The objective of this study was to determine if the Early Eocene paleosols on King George Island, Maritime Antarctica, have acquired their reddish color during the paleopedogenesis, by burial diagenesis and/or by heating of a covering lava flow. We used micromorphology, diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and mineral magnetic prope...

Human-induced biodiversity change impairs ecosystem functions crucial to human well-being. However, the consequences of this change for ecosystem multifunctionality are poorly understood beyond effects of plant species loss, particularly in regions with high biodiversity across trophic levels. Here we adopt a multitrophic perspective to analyze how...

Articles derived from the 15th International Conference on Soil Micromorphology held in Mexico in November-December 2016, with Héctor V. Cabadas Báez and Peter Kühn as guest editors.

The effects of climate and topography on soil physico-chemical and microbial parameters were studied along an extensive latitudinal climate gradient in the Coastal Cordillera of Chile (26° - 38°S). The study sites encompass arid (Pan de Azúcar), semiarid (Santa Gracia), mediterranean (La Campana) and humid (Nahuelbuta) climates and vegetation, rang...

Data from soil chronosequences have been widely used to quantify soil formation and weathering rates, but are less used to determine erosion rates and the stabilisation of moraines over time. We hypothesise that soil erosion rates on moraine hillslopes decrease over time as soils evolve and slopes stabilise. We selected a sequence of moraines in th...

The Chilean Coastal Cordillera features a spectacular climate and vegetation gradient, ranging from arid and unvegetated areas in the north to humid and forested areas in the south. The DFG Priority Program "EarthShape" (Earth Surface Shaping by Biota) uses this natural gradient to investigate how climate and biological processes shape the Earth's...

The Chilean Coastal Cordillera features a spectacular climate and vegetation gradient, ranging from arid and unvegetated areas in the north to humid and forested areas in the south. The EarthShape project ("Earth Surface Shaping by Biota") uses this natural gradient to investigate how climate and biological processes shape the Earth's surface. We e...

Colluvial deposits, as the correlate sediments of human-induced soil erosion, depict an excellent archive of land use and landscape history as indicators of human–environment interactions. This study establishes a chronostratigraphy of colluvial deposits and reconstructs past land use dynamics in the Swabian Jura, the Baar and the Black Forest in S...

What data can be collected to portray particular land use practices in Bronze Age (∼2200-800 BCE)? And how can the Bronze Age agricultural society be described? Are small-scale movements and local impact on landscape as-certainable for these populations? Can differences and shifts between allegedly favorable and unfavorable regions be identified? T...

The objective of this study was to determine if the Early Eocene paleosols on King George Island, Maritime Antarctica, have acquired their reddish color during the paleopedogenesis, by burial diagenesis and/or by heating of a covering lava flow. We used micromorphology, diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and mineral magnetic prope...

The Black Forest is considered to be a rather unfavorable area, having a short vegetation period, low mean annual temperatures, high precipitation, and a pronounced relief. These conditions do not favor agricultural land use and thus it is widely accepted that people only began using the land intensively during the Middle Ages. In this integrated s...

extural pedofeatures are characterised by a difference in grain size with the adjacent groundmass and comprise coatings, infillings, silt cappings, infillings and intercalations. Because the most prominent textural pedofeatures are clay coatings, this chapter focuses mainly on this type of textural feature, its development and occurrence not only i...

Pedology is a discipline with a wide range of applications in geology, geomorphology, archaeology, geoarchaeology and geography. Especially paleopedology aims are to answer questions about climatic changes, rates of pedogenic processes, pedostratigraphy, suitability of former surface soils and human occupation. In combina-tion to other disciplines,...

Today’s global challenges (e.g., food security) are not unprecedented in human history. Starting with the Neolithic transition, the agricultural sector and society underwent several cultural and technological changes and endured natural challenges. These challenges and changes are analyzed by using the adaptive cycle metaphor and the social-ecologi...

A well-based knowledge about the former distribution of Chernozems and Phaeozems is necessary to (i) better understand the factors influencing formation and degradation of these highly fertile soils, and (ii) better explain prehistoric settlement patterns that were also determined by natural factors such as soil fertility. During this archaeopedolo...

This article explores possible correlations of the buried soils of two multi-layered paleolithic sites of the East European Plain: Kostenki 14 and Khotylevo I. The incipient soils and soil series which have formed here have similar pedogenetic properties and serve as soil memory for archaeological reconstructions. However the cultural layers (which...

Biodiversity–ecosystem functioning (BEF) research has extended its scope from communities that are short-lived or reshape their structure annually to structurally complex forest ecosystems. The establishment of tree diversity experiments poses specific methodological challenges for assessing the multiple functions provided by forest ecosystems. In...

Forest ecosystems contribute substantially to global terrestrial primary productivity and climate regulation, but, in contrast to grasslands, experimental evidence for a positive biodiversity-productivity relationship in highly diverse forests is still lacking ¹ . Here, we provide such evidence from a large forest biodiversity experiment with a nov...

Micromorphological, soil chemical and physical and microbial analysis of soils from James Ross Island. Also presented was an GIS-approach to get information about the number and size of Macro- and Microaggregates.

Combined analyses of a soil profile from St. Martha Cove, James Ross lsland, compared to the same analyses of a soil profile from Brandy Bay, James Ross Island

Soils are the basis of our food production, supplying plants with nutrients and water. Farming leaves traces in the soil because cultivation can cause soil erosion. One result is the formation of colluvial deposits, which can be used as geoarchives of past human impacts on their terrestrial environment. The present study combines pedological and ar...

The organic carbon of permafrost affected soils is receiving particular attention with respect to its fate and potential feedback to global warming. The structural and activity changes of methanogenic communities in the degrading permafrost-affected wetlands on the Tibetan Plateau can serve as fundamental elements for modelling feedback interaction...

The paleoclimate during the Early Eocene in Maritime Antarctica is characterized by cool conditions without a pronounced dry season. Soils formed on volcanic material under such climate conditions in modern analogue environments are usually Andosols rich in nanocrystalline minerals without pedogenic smectite. The paleosols formed on volcanic materi...

Loess areas in Central Europe have been settled since ancient times and are therefore predestined to archive information about both the paleoenvironment with and without human activities. In gentle rolling loess-landscapes distinct short and shallow valleys, so-called dells, are prominent landscape elements that act as sediment traps. The loess-pal...

Previous findings showed that the humus-rich topsoils designated as Chernozems around the Baltic Sea were influenced by the addition of pyrogenic organic matter linked with human activity. For a deeper insight into the human activities, we investigated the isotopic signatures of sulphur (δ³⁴S) and the ¹⁴C age from nine soil profiles in order to cla...

Micromorphological, soil physical and chemical and microbial results from two soil profiles on James Ross Island, Maritime Antarctica

Changes in climatic conditions along geographical gradients greatly affect soil nutrient cycling processes. Yet how climate regimes such as changes in temperature influence soil nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) concentrations and their stoichiometry is not well understood. This study investigated the spatial pattern and variability of soil N and P a...

Knowledge of plant functional traits and trait-environment interactions is important for characterizing species strategies and understanding ecological processes. However, comprehensive field data on both above- and belowground traits, together with their environmental variables are scarce. Biome-scale studies are particularly lacking. Here we pres...

Based on field observations, remote sensing, and modeling, recent studies have reported inconsistent changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks in grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau over the past few decades. However, direct evidence about the changes in SOC stocks in the plateau's grasslands coming from in situ, site-by-site, repeated surveys is r...