Cluster A - Climate/Paleoclimate
- Project A1: Modern and past climate: Investigation of atmospheric water supply to the Atacama desert (Chile) from combined in-situ, ground-based and satellite remote sensing observations
- Project A2: Paleoclimate proxies: Miocene to recent precipitation history of the Atacama Desert
- Project A3: Aeolian transport: Statistical-dynamical modelling of aeolian processes in the Atacama Desert over geological time scales and their Implications to life at the dry limit
- Project A4: Land‐ocean coupling between the Humboldt Current System and Atacama palaeoclimate in the Neogene
Cluster B - Biological evolution
- Project B1: Biogeographic history of plant communities
- Project B2: Insects: Evolution, biogeography and genetic diversity of insects . (Tenebrionidae, Zygentoma)
- Project B3: Protist evolution at the dry limit (1st Phase)
- Project B4: Bacteria: Distribution and activity of microorganisms in the Atacama Desert
- Project B5: Soils of the Atacama Desert: reservoir and fingerprint of life (1st Phase)
- Project B6: Earth‐life evolution on short time scales
- Project B7: Desert transcriptomics: assessing the genetic basis of adaptation to aridity in desert dwellers
- Project B8: Comparative diversity and evolutionary age of desert nematode communities
Cluster C - Earth Surface Evolution
- Project C2: Transport and deposition: Deciphering the evolution of the alluvial fans between 21°S and 25°S – the interplay between climatic and tectonic control
- Project C3: Soil dynamics and hillslope processes (1st Phase)
- Project C4: ‘Gypsum desert’ & atmospheric deposition
- Project C5: Tectonic Geomorphology: Adaptation of drainage to tectonic forcing
- Project C7: Modelling the co-evolution of life and landform
- Project C8: Hyper-arid landscapes in transition
- Project C9: The mutual interrelation of microbial communities with evaporites and soil crusts in the Atacama Desert
Cluster D - Method development
- Project D1: Cosmogenic nuclides: dating of old continental sediments in arid environments (1st Phase)
- Project D2: Dating of Evaporites
- Project D3: Stable isotopes: Development of a paleohumidity proxy from oxygen isotopes in Ca-sulfate hydration water
- Project D4: Reconstructing changes of water sources and availability by combined lipid biomarker and online stable isotope and radiocarbon analysis
- Project D5: OSL-Dating: Constraining the Pleistocene environmental history of the Atacama: Extending the age range of luminescence dating (1st Phase)
- Project D6: A Tephrostratigraphic Framework for the Atacama Desert and its Application on Different Sedimentary Archives (1st Phase)
- Project D7: Geophysical imaging of subsurface properties and magnetostratigraphy of sedimentary records
Cluster Z - Service
- Project Z1: Administration and coordination
- Project Z2: Data management and spatial analysis
- Project Z3: Ground based observations and experiments
- Project Z4: Analytical services
- Project Z5: Integrated Research Training Group
