For the Girls' Day 2022, 14 5th-8th grade girls from various schools in Hannover and the surrounding area had the opportunity to gain insights into the Institute of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology as well as into the everyday working life of a geographer.
The program, entitled "Experience Geography: How climate change, soils and droughts are interrelated" included a variety of working methods from the daily routine of a scientist working at the university. The starting point was a contentual introduction in the seminar room, where the research areas of geography were presented and the connections between soils, water storage capacity, droughts, and their increased frequency due to anthropogenic climate change were discussed. Afterwards, it was off to field work in bright sunshine: equipped with classic working tools of a physical geographer/soil scientist such as a Edelmann drill, a soil mapping guide, Munsell color plates, hydrochloric acid, etc., the students were able to analyze for themselves whether and to what extent soils differ at various locations near campus. Fascinating how different soils can be! After a visit to the Mensa, which is typical for everyday university life, the students continued with geoinformatics work and analyses in the computer room, at the end of which they were all able to take home a map created especially for the Girls' Day 2022.
