Dr. Dirk Sachse has taken on the role of Director of Topic 5 "Future Landscapes: Securing Terrestrial Ecosystem and Freshwater Resources under Natural Dynamics and Global Change" for the GFZ in the current research programme PoF IV (2021-2027). He will be in charge of coordinating the GFZ's research activities for the cross-centre research topic. The overall management is the responsibility of the topic spokesperson Prof. Bernd Hansjürgens at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research UFZ. In this topic, ways are shown how multifunctional landscapes can exist in a balance of human influence and natural dynamics - despite population growth and resources hunger. This concerns above all biodiversity, our water consumption, adaptation to climate change, the path towards sustainable agricultural systems and cities. At the GFZ, the natural dynamics of the Earth's surface system are studied above all, also to quantify how much humans are already intervening in this system. Dr. Dirk Sachse succeeds Prof. Dr. Niels Hovius, who has been acting Scientific Director of the GFZ since February 2021.

As a geologist and biogeochemist, Dr Dirk Sachse has been working at the GFZ since 2014 in Section 4.6 Geomorphology as a working group leader of the Organic Surface Geochemistry Laboratory (OSGLab). Here, the regional differences in the effects of past climate changes and changes in biogeochemical cycles on the Earth's surface are researched. Dr. Dirk Sachse's scientific interests lie in researching global material cycles (e.g. the water and carbon cycles) and the causes of their change - between natural processes and human influence.