Tomography of the Earth’s Crust – From Geophysical Sounding to Real-Time Monitoring
This subject deals with the technology and methods that help us to map the structures and properties of the Inner Earth.
The developers of these analysis tools take advantage of the fact that waves travel through the body of the Earth in a certain way, for example. When researchers have details of the waves’ propagation characteristics, they can draw conclusions as to the structure and properties of the Earth’s crust on all of the relevant scales — centimetres to hundreds of kilometres.
Not only is the Earth’s crust home to all types of life, it is also our most important source of resources. It stores raw materials and drinking water supplies, and serves as a basis for economic activity, as well as a final repository and a source of geothermal heat. On the other hand, it is also the part of the planet where dangerous earthquakes and volcanic activity take place. What’s more, the crust is increasingly undergoing anthropogenic changes as a result of human behaviour. This means that investigating and charting the outermost layer of the Earth and the way in which it is changing are two of the most crucial tasks facing the geosciences.
The underlying objective of this research topic is thus to refine tomographic methods and their applications for appropriate geological objects and processes. In recent years, technological developments have been made in this area which open up completely new opportunities, including real-time data acquisition and computer-aided visualisation procedures.
