iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Have you seen our new Interactive Comics? 📢 Our HESCOR Comics created by Dr. Frederik von Reumont were made interactive by Vittorio Iannuzzi and Dr. Elena Robakiewicz to highlight the research at HESCOR! 🔗You can find all our interactive Comics here shorturl.at/l0W9S shorturl.at/bt1It

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

📢 New Blog Post How do humans act in the #Earth System? Dr. Dominik Ohrem and Dr. Shumon Hussain argue for a multi-dimensional account of "human agency." 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/KldFY

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

📢 New Blog Post To understand the #Earth and Human Systems, we break them down into spheres. Dr. Dominik Ohrem and Dr. Shumon Hussain describe the critical elements of the human sphere to create more accurate Earth System Models! 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/UX0Bs

The picture shows the different connections between the Biosphere, Anthroposphere, Hydrosphere, Atmosphere and the Geosphere.

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

📢 New Blog Post How closely can #climate models reproduce Earth’s changing #vegetation over the past 20,000 years?🌳 Dr. Anne Dallmeyer explains how she and her colleagues explore where models succeed - and why they still miss important regional detail 🔎 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/PmTyi

$Tree cover fraction in the MPI-ESM simulation (upper row), pollen-based REVEALS reconstructions (second row) and tree cover difference between MPI-ESM and REVEALS (last row) for selected time-slices.$

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

📢 New Student Blog How to integrate uncertainty and biases in the #HEPModel? Anna shares experiences from her Master's thesis at #UoC, where #ClimateScience & #Archaeology come together. 🔗 Read her story here: www.hescor-project.com/student-pers... and learn more about #HESCOR #OpenScience

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

📢 New Blog Post How did Europe's first #farmers 10,000 years ago interact with their environment? 🌾 Dr. Johanna Hilpert shares how HESCOR researchers are studying the #Linearbandkeramik culture and their relationship with the environment! 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/E6alg #Neolithic #LBK

Example of sites and Human Existence Potential (HEP) calculations in the western distribution of the earliest Linearbandkeramik culture (LBK). Regions with higher potential (higher HEP values) are indicated in red tones, ranging from light to dark. Black dots mark sites of the earliest LBK occupation (after Fischer & Hilpert). The background map is the EMODnet World Base Map.

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

📢 New Blog Post How did past humans utilize some of Africa’s highest landscapes? ⛰️ In his new publication, Dr. Götz Ossendorf explores evidence that reveals how humans 15,000 years ago took advantage of newly ice-free landscapes in #Ethiopia. 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/9VPId

The image shows co-author of the related paper Minassie Girma Tekelemariam and a colleague at an archaeological excavation in the Ethiopian highlands. Photo Credit: Götz Ossendorf

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

📢 New Publication Why did humans intermittently use harsh Afroalpine environments in prehistory?⛰️ Dr Götz Ossendorf et al. present new data from Ethiopia's Bale Mountains offering insights into past landscape change & high-altitude human adaptation! 🔗 shorturl.at/S5dbm #Ethiopia #Alpinearchaeology

Maps of the Bale Mountains region illustrating key archaeological and environmental archives discussed in the paper. Figure Credit: Alexander R. Groos

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

📢 New Blog Post Can artificial intelligence transform how we classify artefacts? 🏺 Discover how Dr. Boqiang Huang is using transfer learning to overcome limited data and subjectivity, unlocking new insights into the past! 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/guxgUDiagram

Diagram illustrating transfer learning with a CNN. A model is first trained on ImageNet for image classification, then its architecture is reused and fine-tuned on an archaeological data set for period and site classification.

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

📢 New Publication How can environmental records be recovered from the Ethiopian Rift? Dr Verena Foerster-Indenhuck and colleagues show how overlapping sediment cores from the Chew Bahir drilling campaign enable reconstructions of past climate and human evolution!🔬 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/BzEDT

Scientific coring campaigns in the Chew Bahir basin. Drilling pilot core CB-01-2009 close to the western basin margin in 2009, using a rotary single tube drill, with the cored sediment segments in the transport crate with a core diameter of 91 mm. Transect short cores across the basin were collected with a vibro-corer and smaller diameter liners. HSPDP deep-drilling campaign in November–December 2014, ∼ 3 km away from the western margin using duplicate coring strategy and soft-sediment coring tools (left: alien corer; right: extended nose corer, with non-rotating shoe). Six small ponds were excavated to store the daily required 40 000 L of drilling fluid per day. Recovered core segments were processed, weighed, measured and sealed for transport in the nearby science tent. Photos by the CHB science team.

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

📢 New Publication Dr Yaping Shao and colleagues present a new open-access PLOS ONE study simulating population dynamics during the Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic Transition (ca. 50–38 ka) on the Iberian Peninsula. #MiddlePalaeolithic #Neanderthals #Aurignacien #AMH 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/YU0Da

Displayed are the MP (blue triangle), AUR-P1 (solid red circle), and AUR-P2 sites (open red circle). Three special Aurignacian sites — Cardina-Salto do Boi, Abrigo de la Malia, and Lapa do Picareiro — are also indicated. The last Neanderthal (NEA) refugia are primarily located in coastal areas, delineated by a dashed blue circle. The initial expansion routes of anatomically modern humans (AMHs) associated with AUR-P1 are shown with thick solid red arrows. The subsequent Duero route, extending from Cantabria into inland Iberia, is represented by thick dashed red arrows. The expansion pathways of AMHs linked to AUR-P2 are marked by thin dashed red arrows. A potential zone of admixture between NEAs and AMHs is identified along the northern Iberian coast, enclosed by a white dashed circle.

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

📢 HESCOR Seminar #UoC Master's students! 👋 Curious about how humans and the Earth interact in complex, dynamic systems? 🌐🤝 Explore cutting-edge research and modelling approaches from climate science, archaeology, mathematics, and the humanities – all in one seminar! 🔗 read more: shorturl.at/OxQzZ

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

📢 New Blog Post How might the first anatomically modern humans have migrated across Europe? 🌍👣 @isabell-schmidt.bsky.social explores this question using the “Our Way Model” and results from our recent Nature Communications paper! 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/5WsC6

A topographical map of Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Levant showing the chronological expansion of modern humans. Colored contour lines (blue to green) represent arrival times in thousands of years ago (ka), moving from the Levant (older dates) into Western Europe (younger dates). Red dots identify key archaeological sites with specific date ranges.

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

📢 Studierendenperspektive Von Großwildjagd zur Polykrise: Student der HESCOR Ringvorlesung Tristan Boente erklärt, warum wir für die komplexen Herausforderungen unserer Zeit neue wissenschaftliche Denkansätze brauchen! 🌍💡 🔗 Hier weiterlesen: shorturl.at/auQIK

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

📢 Student Perspective What makes Earth Scientists so sure that the current #climate crisis is man-made? HESCOR Ringvorlesung student Bethan Callow explains why scientists have a lot of certainty about our role in current global climate changes!🌦️ 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/1K1ez

A view of Earth from space against a starry background with a bright sun flare. Large white text on the right asks: 'IS CLIMATE CHANGE NATURAL?'

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

📢 New Publication We often think of clothing in early human evolution as „dress“, „haute couture“ or simply as functional. @shumon.bsky.social argues that this has fundamentally clouded our view for the role of clothing in negotiating past human-animal relationships!🔎 🔗 read more: shorturl.at/JyXsk

An illustration of a vast grassland filled with a large herd of American bison, while in the foreground two Indigenous North American hunters disguised under white wolf skins crouch low in the grass, each holding a bow and arrows as they wait to attack the animals under a hazy, open sky.
Mary Evans, ›Native American Indian Buffalo hunt under the White Wolf Skin. An Indian stratagem on the level prairies‹ (c. 1858). Museum of the City of New York.

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Reposted by HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research

Shumon T. Hussain @shumon.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Together with Krist Vaesen, I have written some words of caution about #replication in lithic analysis. We fear that the way the issue has been taken up in #Palaeolithic #archaeology can narrow the scope of disciplinary inquiry 🏺🧪🦣 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

cambridge.org

The Perks and Perils of Replicability | American Antiquity | Cambridge Core

The Perks and Perils of Replicability

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

📢 New Blog Post Lakes may seem stable in our everyday experience, but over hundreds to thousands of years they can change a lot! Dr. Elena Robakiewicz explains lake #coring and what Lake Nakuru (Kenya) reveals about the past 35,000 years!🔬 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/FRHLi

Different measurements from Lake Nakuru through time. This includes diatoms that represent at least 10% in one sample ; T. Index which shows potential depth; conductivity (amount of salts in the lake); aridity (Dim1 and K/Ti); biological productivity (Dim2, Ca/Mg, Si/Zr, Sr/Ti, and inc/coh); and anoxia (Dim3, Mo, and Fe/Mn). Global climate phases are highlighted with the anticipated dry phase (Last Glacial Maximum, LGM) in brown and the anticipated wet phase in blue (Bølling–Allerød interstadial, B-A).

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

📢 New Blog Post How can a rock from hundreds of kilometers away become a stone tool? Dr. Johanna Hilpert explains how HESCOR researchers study prehistoric #networks of interaction and #exchange 🌐🤝 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/f0t5G #Magdalenian #LBK #Modelling

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

📢 New Blog Post Understanding #reconstructions of past vegetation can be difficult…. @oliverkern.bsky.social introduces his PALVEG app to make the maps from #paleovegetation reconstructions more accessible to researchers across all disciplines! 💻🌳 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/dNas6

User interface of the PALVEG app. In the panel on the left hand side, various options such as the desired time interval, specific (groups of) taxa, and different display options can be selected. On the right hand side, maps are dynamically generated based on the user input.

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

📢 New Publication Dr. Elena Robakiewicz’s team used #multi-proxy data to trace 40,000 years of change at Kenya’s Lake Nakuru, showing why such records matter in alkaline lakes and hinting that Nakuru’s chemistry responded to short-term Northern Hemisphere #climate shifts. shorturl.at/ArQbd

shorturl.at

Moisture availability and productivity at Lake Nakuru, Kenya leading into the African Humid Period

Lake Nakuru, a lake with the one of the highest primary production rates in the world, is an eastern African soda lake that contains important records…

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

📢 New Blog Post Achieving true interdisciplinarity is hard! @shumon.bsky.social makes an argument for accepting the transformative nature of #interdisciplinary research - even if that means researchers must revisit their standard methods and assumptions! 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/YE4gx

Graphical summary of differences between disciplinarity, multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity and some key conditions to achieve the latter.

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Reposted by HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research

Shumon T. Hussain @shumon.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

My grapple with the "ontological turn" and its implications for human-animal archaeologies; many points are not new but I contend that "ontological" cannnot be a mere replacement for "culture" and that the critique is radically empirical (not "metaphysical"): www.eaz-journal.org/index.php/ea... 🏺

eaz-journal.org

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

📢 Upcoming Event BLE & HESCOR Workshop: Interdisciplinary Cooperation and Profile Building 🌐🤝 When: November 28th, 10:00-14:00 Where: Stadtpalais in Aachen 🔗 detailed program & information on how to register: shorturl.at/PRotW #interdisciplinary #research #collaboration

Slide showing name and date of the workshop and logos of the projects as well as of the University of Cologne and RWTH Aachen University.

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Reposted by HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research

Oliver A. Kern @oliverkern.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

🔔🔔New Paper 🔔🔔 Pollen-based REVEALS land-cover reconstructions for Europe during the latter half of the Last Glacial Period essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/... We show that glacial refugia and frequent openings of migration corridors may have played a substantial role human dispersal

essd.copernicus.org

Landscape reconstructions for Europe during the late Last Glacial (60–20 ka BP): a pollen-based REVEALS approach

Abstract. Vegetation change during the Last Glacial period in Europe plays a crucial role in better understanding the ecosystem dynamics response to abrupt climate change. Yet, most quantitative recon...

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

📢 New Blog Post What's a (good) model? Dr. Annika Vogel highlights the questions that need to be answered and decisions that need to be made to appropriately #model interdisciplinary phenomena - there are always tradeoffs! 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/JklT1

shorturl.at

What is a good model? - Hescor

What's a (good) model? Dr. Annika Vogel highlights the questions that need to be answered and decisions that need to be made to appropriately model interdisciplinary phenomena - there are always trade...

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

📢 New Blog Post How can machine learning be used in archaeology? 💻 Dr. Boqiang Huang lists the ways that archaeologists could use machine learning to revolutionize standard archaeological methods. 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/PRwTl

The figure depicts the four ways that Machine Learning can benefit archaeology: feature detection, site identification, chronological modelling, and artifact classification.

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

📢 New Blog Post How can we actually map out potential patterns of human #migration? Max Brockmann discusses how he and Lena Perlberg use methods of #probability to estimate how earlier humans may have moved throughout Europe! 🌍 #modelling #leastcostpath #costmap 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/lIKIB

Visualization of the least-cost path between three points, calculated using Dijkstra's algorithm. The route successfully circumvents major topographical obstacles like the Alps and the Pyrenees, while also finding optimal passages through the mountains where necessary. (copyright: Lena Perlberg).

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

📢 New Blog Post How did #Palaeolithic humans cope with the sudden cold of the Younger Dryas (~12,000 years ago) in Europe? ❄️ A team led by HESCOR’s @isabell-schmidt.bsky.social and Andreas Maier has answers! 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/n2tND

The map shows population shifts from south-western to north-eastern Europe during the last cold phase of the Ice Age. Photo: Isabell Schmidt, University of Cologne.

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

📢 Upcoming Event HESCOR Vision Forum Session on European Neolithic Transitions, Networks, and Beyond! 🔍 When ⏰: Monday, September 22nd, 2025, from 09:00-12:00 Where📍: @unicologne.bsky.social 🔗 detailed program & information on how to register: shorturl.at/YO1Qk #Neolithic #Networks #Archaeology

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

📢 New Blog Post How might an #interdisciplinary database work? HESCOR Project Database Manager, Philipp Schlüter, lays out the technical problems and potential solutions for creating HESCOR's #database. 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/g3P7l

Diagram showing a virtual machine running a Docker environment. Inside Docker are four isolated containers: NGINX proxy, CKAN application, PostgreSQL (metadata), and SOLR search—representing the HESCOR database components running separately.

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Reposted by HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research

Shumon T. Hussain @shumon.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

Upcoming @hescor.bsky.social and @mesh-research-hub.bsky.social event at the University of Cologne on the "Politics of More-Than-Human Life and Earth System Science" with an exciting programme: www.hescor-project.com/news/politic...

hescor-project.com

Politics of more-than-human life and Earth System Science - Hescor

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

📢 New Blog Post Living in high-altitudes is challenging - but humans in the #Ethiopian highlands have done it for tens of thousands of years! Dr. Götz Ossendorf introduces his hypothesis that social connectedness allowed past humans to endure such harsh conditions! 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/vH1en

View from the Afroalpine Plateau into the lowlands (Bale Mountains, SE Ethiopia).

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

📢 New Blog Post What have we learned from animals and they from us? @shumon.bsky.social & Dr. Dominik Ohrem highlight their research to better integrate the ways that humans and animals learn from each other and how that knowledge-sharing impacts the Earth System! 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/6zdAa

The figure contains graphical, iconic (human and animal icons) and textual elements. They are horizontally arranged to form three separate compartments, each of which is populated by a different configuration of humans and animals, accompanied by a symbolic and descriptive qualification of the associated learning mode. On the left, humans learn to think about themselves and their worlds through other animals (for example a raven), exemplified by the question “Who am I in this world?” (learning through). In the middle, humans take inspiration from other animals (for example beavers) in how to manipulate their environments, exemplified by the realization “Ah, this is how it works!” (learning from). On the right, humans make themselves at home in the world in such a way that they can coinhabit their environments with other animals (for example wolves), thereby co-learning how to live effectively in these environments with the respective animals (learning with). The framing arrows on the top and bottom indicate that human cultural frameworks can be expected to shape these modes of learning to various degrees and that their behavioural integration can be expected to differ across spatiotemporal scales.

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

📢 New Blog Post How can we actually model human migration? Max Brockmann breaks down how mathematicians can use Partial Differential Equations to #model continental-scale human #migrations in prehistory! 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/vROZj #PDE #data #mathematics #interdisciplinary #prehistory

shorturl.at

Modelling human migration on networks using partial differential equations - Hescor

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

📢 New Blog Post What does innovation have to do with #population? And what drives #innovation - hardship or abundance? @tilmanhartley.bsky.social explores some of the theoretical questions about how different aspects of #human #societies might impact innovation! 🔗 read on here: shorturl.at/KSiJK

shorturl.at

How do population size and connectedness, and resource scarcity and sufficiency, influence technological innovation? - Hescor

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

📢 New Publication @shumon.bsky.social was invited to write an authoritative overview of core themes, findings and research frontiers in the emerging field of #Palaeolithic #human-animal studies. #multispecies #humananimalrelations read on here: tinyurl.com/bdcvpwwn

tinyurl.com

Paleolithic and Human-Animal Relations

"Paleolithic and Human-Animal Relations" published on by null.

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

🚀 New Project! @shumon.bsky.social and his colleagues Johannes Schick & @nakedprimate.bsky.social just received funding from @volkswagenstiftung.de for their new research project „ZOOGESTURES“! #multispecies Congrats! @mesh-research-hub.bsky.social @unicologne.bsky.social tinyurl.com/kswsda4k

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

📢 Join #HESCOR at the #VarI #Tag-der-Archäologie this Saturday (July 5, 11–17 h) in Bonn! Tilman and Johanna will present our research on long-term #human–environment interactions. Discover #archaeological institutions and projects in #Cologne & #Bonn. More info here:

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

Researchers at universities rarely work with researchers in other departments - why? Dr. Elena Robakiewicz highlights the difficulties of understanding #research and #data in other fields and what HESCOR is doing to address data #communication issues! 🔗 read on here: tinyurl.com/bdffven4

tinyurl.com

Communicating Interdisciplinary Data - Hescor

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

✍️ HESCOR Comics We are collaborating with Dr Frederik von Reumont (Institute of Geography Education) to create easily digestible #educational #comics about the #interdisciplinary scientific process for the public, ranging in age from school children to the young at heart! 🔗 tinyurl.com/ed825wmf

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

What is HESCOR? 🤔 Join Andreas Maier and Nikki Vercauteren for insights into HESCOR‘s vision and research goals! want to learn more? hescor-project.com #HESCOR #Interdisciplinary #UniCologne #EarthSystem #HumanSystem #ResearchProject #Culture #Nature

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HESCOR - Human & Earth System Coupled Research @hescor.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Hello Bluesky! 👋 Welcome to the official Bluesky account of #HESCOR - an interdisciplinary research project based at the #UniCologne! We explore how the human and earth system co-evolve, bridging natural sciences, system modelling, and the humanities. 🔗 Learn more: www.hescor-project.com

hescor-project.com

HESCOR: Human & Earth System Coupled Research

HESCOR unites Earth system science, human modelling & humanities to study how climate and culture have co-evolved across history.

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