On October 9, 2019, a first meeting took place at the Geocentre Hannover with the aim of bringing together interested parties with geological/geophysical data of the uppermost earth crust. Twenty-one representatives from universities, public research institutions and geological services came together to inform each other about existing research data infrastructure of the different geological/geophysical subdisciplines and to debate about work objectives and further measures. In a first joint action a new name was voted on: "NFDI for Solid Earth" became "NFDI Lithosphere". The second meeting took place on 12 February at the Geozentrum, where goals and priorities were discussed.

Due to Corona the following working meetings took place virtually. After discussions with representatives of NFDI4Earth, it was finally agreed to withdraw the letter of intent for a consortium of its own at the DFG in order to submit a joint funding proposal to the DFG together with NFDI4Earth in September 2020. In order to bring the needs of geology and geophysics into the NFDI, the Interest Group Geology & Geophysics (I3G) has been established. This group is open for new ideas and members.