How Can We Redefine Natural Hazards Through Societal and Health Responses?

In this video, KELLEY DE POLT argues for a more integrated understanding of natural hazards by linking extreme heat events with societal interest and public health impacts. Focusing on Germany, she uses climate data, media trends, and health records to identify the duration of heatwaves that trigger the strongest societal responses. Her work highlights the need to move beyond hazard-only definitions and adopt a systemic, interdisciplinary approach to risk.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB101203

Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry

The research is dedicated to the study of global biogeochemical cycles and their long-term interactions with the biosphere, the atmosphere, the geosphere and the entire climate system. We want to better understand how living organisms - including humans - exchange basic resources such as water, carbon, nitrogen and energy with their environment and how this affects global climate and ecosystems. Biogeochemistry is the science of the Earth's metabolism. Elements essential to life such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and phosphorus are constantly undergoing biological, chemical and physical transformations as they are exchanged between different parts of the Earth, the lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and atmosphere. The "biogeochemical cycles" quantitatively describe the distribution and exchange of elements between these components of the Earth system.