Lecture 1b “The life cycle of Mountains”

“In nature nothing exists alone.” (Rachel Carson)

The life cycle of Mountains

Preamble:

Mountains are dynamic systems that evolve over vastly different timescales, from the slow, geological processes that build and wear down entire ranges over tens of millions of years, to the rapid, often destructive natural hazards such as landslides and earthquakes that occur over human timescales. This course explores the full life cycle of mountains—from their formation through plate tectonics and crustal deformation, to their erosion and eventual disappearance. It also addresses the feedbacks between mountain building, climate, and ecological and chemical cycles, and examines how geophysical and geomorphological hazards emerge in active mountain belts. Through this multi-scale perspective, students gain a holistic understanding of mountains as both geological and environmental systems.

Benefits from lecture:

Students have acquired basic understanding of and can explain how mountains are formed and eroded. They are able to discuss the interlinked processes of mountain building influencing climate and the carbon cycle over different timescales and can assess natural geophysical and geomorphological natural hazards inherent to active mountain ranges.

Special features of lecture:

A Journey Through Time and Scale: Experience the evolution of mountain ranges from deep geologic time to modern-day dynamics—exploring how colossal forces shape the Earth and how those changes affect our climate, ecosystems, and societies.
Focus on Natural Hazards in Mountain Regions: Learn how to assess and explain mountain hazards such as earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions.... with real world applications... and a special focus on their occurrence in space and time
Interdisciplinary Integration and Discussion-Based & Research-Inspired Learning: This course links geology with interdisciplinary mountain research disciplines to give students an integrative understanding of Earth's (mountain) systems.

Main lecturers:

Michael Strasser
Jasper Moernaut

Lectures

Unit 1 - Outdoor Kick-off on Hungerburg-Terrace

30.09.2025, 17:00 - 18:00; Michael Strasser (following overly Kick-off Event starting 16:00)

Observing mountain landscapes and identifying mountain building elements.
Formulating Questions and Objectives to be addressed in the course.
How to build and use different perspectives to study mountains through time and space.

Unit 2 - The global perspective of mountain ranges:

08.10.2025, 8:30 - 10:00, Michael Strasser (2x45 min)

Where do we have high topography on our planet and why?
Lecture and short exercise to self-explore the basic concepts of how planetary-scale plate tectonics govern topographic evolution of different types of mountain ranges

Unit 3 - Weathering down a mountain

15.10.2025, 8:30 - 10:00; Michael Strasser (2x45 min)

and how this links to the global carbon cycle and Earth’s climate evolution

Lecture and short exercise to identify interlinked Earth´s system processes throughout the life cycle of mountains relating mountain processes to climate evolution and the carbon cycle over different timescales. Defining and introducing task and objectives of Grand Debate Discussions in Unit 5

Unit 4 - No in person class

Student homework assignment to prepare the Grand Debate in Unit 5:

Do mountain building processes affect global climate, or does global climate drive mountain processes?
Literature reading of controversial concepts acting on different timescales.

Unit 5 - Grand Debate Discussions on climate-tectonic interaction in Mountains

29.10.2025, 8:30 - 10:00; Michael Strasser & Students (2x45 min)

Unit 6 - History of mountain landscape evolution

05.11.2025, 8:30 - 10:00; Michael Strasser (2x45 min)

How to reconstruct the full history of mountain landscape evolution in the greater Innsbruck area (with links back to kick-off on Hungerburg) –
Lecture and small exercise on how to constrain time in mountain processes across different timescales.

Unit 7 - The full life cycle of the Eastern Alps

12.11.2025, 8:30 - 10:00; Michael Strasser (2x45 min)

A short 250-million-year history of the Austrian Alps featuring oceans, volcanoes, mountains, and lowland glaciers, and an outlook into their likely future (lecture, discussion perspectives and questionnaire).