New publication: Yearbook – Volume 2

GeoSphere Austria has published the second volume of its Yearbook for Geosciences.

Volume 2 of the yearbook begins with the building at Hohe Warte 40 in Vienna's Döbling district. Starting in the 1880s, it traces the eventful history of the ‘Villa Bleier’ to the present-day ‘Max Margules House’, where the GeoSphere Austria computer centre is located. Today, a commemorative plaque and a memorial stone commemorate the Bleier family, who were expelled from here in 1938. (Christa Hammerl).

This is followed by two papers on mineral raw materials and resource classification based on the UNFC (United Nations Framework Classification for Resources) guidelines. The first is a guide to applying these guidelines to mineral raw materials in Austria; the second builds on this to calculate the reserves of gravel sand deposits in Austria. (Sebastian Pfleiderer et al.)

Martin Thöni's English-language paper on garnet and zircon geochronology in high-pressure rocks of the Eastern Alps is a continuation of his work from Volume 1 of the Yearbook. It is a critical evaluation of ‘robust’ mineral ages from the last 35 years from rocks of the Eoalpine high-pressure belt in the Eastern Alpine region.

Michael Moser presents the discovery of the trace fossil Rotundusichnium from the western Gutenstein Alps (Lower Austria), providing evidence of a deep marine depositional environment during the Triassic period.

In a short paper, Gerit Griesmeier and Stjepan Ćorić present the results of detailed geological mapping along the east-west border of the two map sheets 68 Kirchdorf an der Krems and 50 Bad Hall in Upper Austria.

Obituaries commemorate Otmar Schermann (1934–2024) and Peter Klein (1944–2025), both former employees of the Geological Survey of Austria (GBA), as well as Volker Höck (1943–2025) and Katalin Augustin-Gyurits (1941–2025), who were closely associated with the GBA as correspondents.

Thirteen mapping reports from the period 2016 to 2024 document the progress of geological surveying in the various geological units of Austria.

Two reviews of books on marble conclude the 228 pages of Volume 2.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)