Category: Allgemein

The 96 issues of the Short Notes, published by the Swiss Geotechnical Commission SGTK between 1931 and 2000 as part of the Contributions to the Geology of Switzerland – Geotechnical Series, can be downloaded free of charge as PDF files from the following website: swisstopo online shop

We welcome our new team member Gérard Perren joining our team on December 2nd, 2019.
Gérard completed his PhD in Physics at ETH Zürich. He worked in the Laboratory for Solid State Physics and carried out experimental studies on pressure- and field-induced quantum phase transitions in magnetic insulators.
Gérard will work on our new data science project in collaboration with the Swiss Geological Survey at swisstopo. He will develop methods and machine learning algorithms to (semi-) automatically gather, analyse and interpret geoscientific datasets mainly from new geothermal exploration projects in Switzerland but also from existing datasets at swisstopo.

The Georesources Switzerland Group (FGS) in the Department of Earth Sciences at ETH Zurich offers a master thesis in the field of geology. We look for a candidate with an interest and experience in field geology and stratigraphy. For further information please visit the advertisement on sirop.org with detailed information.

We welcome our new team member Lukas Nibourel who joined our group on 1 March 2019.
Lukas just completed his PhD in Geology at the University of Bern. He studied the structural and thermo-kinematic evolution of the eastern Aar Massif of the Swiss Central Alps.
Lukas will work on our new project on the assessment of “hardstone” occurrences in Switzerland. This project is carried out in collaboration with swisstopo. He will also contribute to our gravel and sand resources project with compiling data and producing new, regional resources and quaternary geological maps.

We cordially welcome Loïc Pierdona as our new team member as of 1 January 2019. Loïc just completed his MSc in Geology at the University of Geneva. He will work on our new project “heat flow in Swiss North-Alpine Foreland Basin” producing an updated, harmonised temperature dataset and a new near-surface heat flow map. Parts of the project are in collaboration with the Geothermal Energy and Geofluids group of Prof. Martin Saar.

Three colleagues have left our team by the end of 2018. We say goodbye to Margrit Oertle-Mock, our assistant and secretary, after almost 30 years of work at the Swiss Geotechnical Commission (SGTK) and then at the Fachgruppe Georessourcen Schweiz offices. Thanks very much Margrit!
We also say goodbye to Arsin Grünig, our IT and geodatabase expert, and to Gregor Zographos, who was mainly responsible for the finalisation of the “Stein und Wein” monograph. Thanks Arsin and Gregor for your valued contributions to our team!

Check out our talks and posters in the SGM 2018 session 21 “Geoscience and Geoinformation”:

PDF SGM2018 Abstracts FGS

• 21.3
  Fulda D., Grünig A., Heuberger S.
  The Resource Information System (RIS) – the digital memory of mineral resource occurrences in Switzerland
• 21.6
  Grünig A., Fulda D.
  Harmonizing and aggregating datasets of different periods of time – the process explained by means of Swiss quarries
• 21.7
  Heuberger S.
  120 years of institutional research on Swiss georesources
• P 21.3
  Fulda D., Grünig A.
  The Resource Information System (RIS): A web application for mineral resource data of Switzerland

Iwan Vitins (former colleague in the SGTK office) and Stefan Heuberger co-authored a paper (Boubanga-Toumbet et al. 2018) in Remote Sensing. The authors established a new remote sensing approach to distinguish carbonate minerals at outcrop scale which was successfully applied and evaluated in a Swiss carbonate quarry.

Dr. Regina Reber has joined our team as of 1 September. Regina is a specialist for Quaternary Geology in Switzerland. She’s responsible for our new project “Assessment of natural sand and gravel resources of Switzerland” in which she will elaborate a resource-related quantification and qualification of unconsolidated rock deposits. We wish Regina a good start!

The Swiss Geotechnical Commission (SGTK), a commission of the Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT), was dissolved in June 2018 due to organisational reasons. This included also the commission’s office at the Department of Earth Sciences (D-ERDW) at ETH Zurich.

Simultaneously, the Georesources Switzerland Group was founded at ETH Zürich on 1.7.2018, as a group associated to the Department of Earth Sciences but with no more relation to SCNAT. The entire staff of the former SGTK office is now part of this new group. SCNAT is considering to continue the topic of the georesources in Switzerland, probably still in the form of an expert commission.

The new group continues focussing on the topic of the Swiss Georesources in the framework of the D-ERDW. The group conducts applied research in close collaboration with the Swiss Geological Survey (Federal Office of Topography swisstopo) as well as with different industry partners. Main focus areas are the today’s most important mass mineral resources in Switzerland (gravel, sand, clay, limestone, salt, gypsum, natural stone), but also geological energy resources as well as secondary raw materials. Further focus areas are georesources-related questions about the use of the underground and questions about environmental geology.