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Welcome to the world of deep fluids!
We would like to congratulate the youngest member of our research group, Tamás Keresztes, and his supervisor, Tamás Spránitz, on the successful defense of his MSc thesis last week, which received an excellent (thesis) and good (defense) rating. The thesis is entitled “STUDY OF FLUID-ROCK INTERACTIONS IN SEDIMENTARY GRANULITES IN THE LOWER CRUST OF THE PANNONIAN BASIN.” Thank you, Tamás, for helping us better understand the complex evolutionary history of sedimentary-origin lower crust fluids!
Organized by the HUN-REN Center, our research group had the opportunity to present and discuss its findings and the professional questions they raise at an extremely relevant, interdisciplinary meeting. Interdisciplinary workshop on Earth, Environment and Healthy Living
For more info, click on the picture:
Thomas Lange, member of our research group, defended his PhD thesis summa cum laude on 15.04.2025. The dissertation “From mantle evolution to intensive surface CO2 degassing in the Southeastern Carpathians, Central Europe” covered several topics, making a striking link between deep and surface processes.
He classified the xenoliths as lherzolites and harzburgite that dominantly have protogranular and porphyroclastic, rarely equigranular textures, often containing olivine and pyroxene equilibrium textures. He demonstrated that secondary fluid inclusions of the studied mantle xenoliths contain solid phases, and the nanoscale phase transformation of clinopyroxene to amphibole. He determined the hydrogen and oxygen stable isotopic ratios of spring and well waters from the southern Târgu Secuiesc intramountain basin.
Congratulations!
Csaba Szabó, a senior member of our research group, won this year’s Kálmán Medzihradszky Prize. The Dean of the Faculty, based on the initiative of the Scientific Student Council of ELTE Faculty of Science and Technology, by majority vote, awarded the Kálmán Medzihradszky Prize 2025 to Dr. Csaba Szabó, retired Associate Professor of the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, outstanding researcher of the Department of Petrology and Geochemistry of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and the Lithosphere Fluid Research Laboratory of ELTE.
With a career spanning more than four decades, Csaba Szabó is an internationally renowned scholar of petrology and geochemistry, whose name is intertwined with the exemplary tradition of talent management and scientific education in our Faculty. Through his teaching and mentoring, he has launched generations of researchers into scientific careers, many of his students have become leaders in national and international research institutions. His commitment to the scientific student circle movement, his more than thirty-five PhD students, his many nationally awarded TDK projects under his leadership and his decades of organizational work are all testimony to his tireless work in educating young scientists. Csaba Szabó’s life’s work as a talent manager, his work in creating scientific schools and his unwavering commitment to science set an exceptional example for us all.
The report can be accessed here, and a video interview can be reach via here.
“Understanding the origin, behaviour, and migration pathways of deep-seated gases—such as carbon dioxide, hydrogen, methane, and radon—can offer valuable new perspectives on climate change and even earthquake prediction. For example, several ongoing studies at the HUN-REN Institute of Earth Physics and Space Science (HUN-REN EPSS) are examining the impact of geologically sourced carbon dioxide in both soil and the atmosphere.” A long article has been published on the HUN-REN website describing the work of our research group and its research objectives. You can read the full article here.
Researchers were eligible to win non-reimbursable grants of HUF 2 400 000 gross and HUF 1 200 000 gross in two categories. Applications were received from researchers in all three major scientific fields, and the decision was made by a jury of experts in the respective fields, taking into account professional and equal opportunities criteria.
The grant is available from 1 May 2025 to 30 April 2026, with a choice of 3, 4, 6, 8 or 12 months, broken down by month according to the duration.
A total of 65 valid applications were received for this call for proposals: 18 in category 1 and 47 in category 2. Proposals were received from all three major disciplines: humanities and social sciences, life sciences, and mathematics and natural sciences.
A jury of experts in the respective disciplines assessed the applications on their merits, taking into account professional and equal opportunities criteria, and recommended the applicants to be supported. Based on the jury’s recommendations, the Secretary General of the MTA decided on the winning applications. This year, 14 proposals were selected for funding in the first category and 28 in the second category, for a total of HUF 67.2 million.
Members of our research team Mátyás Hencz and Károly Németh participated in the IAVCEI Volcandpark 2024 conference in May. Thanks to their active participation, the HUN-REN Institute of Earth Physics and Space Science will host a prestigious international conference, as the next IAVCEI Volcandpark conference will take place here in May 2026.
The Volcandpark conference is the flagship event of the IAVCEI Commission on Volcanic Geoheritage and Protected Landscape, which was held in 2012 in Olot (Spain), in 2016 in Lanzarote (Spain, Canary Islands) and for the first time after the pandemic this year in Jičín (Czech Republic). The aim of the conference is to bring together experts in the research, assessment, protection, education and management of volcanic sites from many regions of the world to disseminate new ideas, concepts and techniques in the management and promotion of volcanic heritage. The ultimate goal is to contribute to building a more resilient society, to better understand the impacts of volcanic processes, both physical and social, and thus to ensure more effective preparedness for volcanic hazards and threats to volcanic geological heritage.
The Sopron location is ideal for accessibility and also for the planned field days. About an hour away is the Kemenes Volcano Park (with the Volcano House) and Ság Hill, where a relatively new and spectacular geotourism site will be visited during one of the field days. The other field trip site, the Bakony-Balaton Highland UNESCO Global Geopark (Bakony-Balaton Highland Volcanic Field), is an hour and a half away from Sopron, where participants will learn in detail about the formation of monogenetic volcanoes in a geomorphologically very interesting volcanic area of several million years of age. They will also gain insights into the functioning of a geopark operating in a volcanic area, into heritage conservation and geotourism work, as well as into the multidisciplinary research actively carried out in the area.
We look forward to welcoming you all in Sopron in May 2026! More details coming soon.
Main organisers: Mátyás Hencz, Károly Németh
Our research team also attaches importance to sharing our results widely. With this aim in mind, we were delighted to accept the invitation of the Mineral Friendly Specialist Group of the TiT Studio Association (https://www.facebook.com/TITStudioEgyesulet), which was accepted by our colleague Mátyás Hencz. In his informative lecture he presented our latest volcanological and GIS results of the Balaton Highlands (“THE VOLCANOES OF THE BALATON HIGHLANDS: CONCLUSIONS BASED ON TEREPIC VOLCANOLOGICAL AND GIS RESEARCH”) at the meeting of the Association on 17.04.2024.
Thank you for the honourable invitation and for your kind attention! Following the presentation, many questions were raised, which were also inspiring for our research team.
https://www.tit.hu/studio/pr_tudomanybarat.html
For students and for solving geological problems!
Busy days at the research team…
The ATLAS symposium, organised by the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, is a professional event organised by the department’s graduate student community on topics in earth science, paleontology, environmental science and social geography. This year, the organisers asked Márta Berkesi to be one of the symposium’s keynote speakers. Márta Berkesi gave her presentation online, entitled “Tracing lithosphere-scale fluid transport in the Pannonian Basin (central Europe)”.
Details: here
Thank you for the opportunity and the fruitful discussion with the staff and students of the department!
We switched the focus from Canada to our neighbouring country Austria, as the research team also participated in a French-German-Italian-Hungarian-Polish international collaboration session at this year’s EGU (European Geosciences Union) meeting in Vienna. The session was entitled “Solving geoscience problems using mineralogy”. The session, which included 19 presentations and 28 posters, addressed a number of problems and possible solutions for geoscientists: critical elements, earthquake rupture and elastic thermobarometry, soil analysis and the potential for the study of Martian rocks: more
It was a privilege to do all this with colleagues such as Jannick Ingrin, Melanie Sieber, Mara Murri, Rosario Esposito, Nicola Campomenosi, Stelianos Aspiotis, Juraj Majzlan and Julia Sordyl.
In addition to our research, we are continuing our work on the organisation of the sessions, as our research group is already working – also in international collaboration – on the realisation of a session at another important meeting, the EMC (European Mineralogical Conference) in Dublin, where the main focus will be on fluid and melt inclusions: here
Earthquakes and CO2-rich fluids may be so closely related geologically that we might even use the “chicken or the egg” analogy to explain the elusive temporality of this relationship. Could deep geologically-derived fluids help trigger some earthquakes or could the triggering of earthquakes cause a fluid release, or are the two effects a consequence of each other? These are just a few of the questions worth exploring in more detail.
A series of articles by the HUN-REN Institute for Earth Physics and Space Science was published in the October issue of the Physical Reviews (Fizikai Szemle) entitled:
“Earthquakes through a physical lens or what the news misses”.
In the columns of the Physics Reviews, members of the research team (Márta Berkesi and colleagues) summarise the known links between earthquakes, typically of higher magnitude, and fluid flows.
The paper also addresses the following exciting questions:
Whether volcanic eruptions can be caused by earthquakes (by Károly Németh, a research team co-author),
Whether earthquakes can (or will) be predicted (by Sándor Szakács and István Kovács),
How we can see the traces of earthquakes in the upper atmosphere (Veronika Barta and colleagues).
Articles related to the Institute are available at the link below:
