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Grundlagen für die Prognose, Überwachung und nachhaltige Regulierung von Schädlingen im Obst- und Freilandgemüsebau

Die hohen Ansprüche an die Qualität von Obst und Gemüse führen zu einer besonders geringen Tole-ranz für Beeinträchtigungen durch Schädlinge. Deshalb muss deren wirkungsvolle und umweltschonende Regulierung auch in Zukunft garantiert sein, selbst unter dem Einfluss des Klimawandels und beim Auftreten neuer invasiver Arten. Als Grundlage für die Überwachung und für neue Integrierte Bekämpfungsstrategien liefert das Tätigkeitsfeld Kenntnisse über die Biologie von Schädlingen (Insekten, Milben) und Nützlingen in den Agrarökosystemen des Obstbaus und des Freilandgemüsebaus. Es stellt Phänologiemodelle und Entscheidungshilfesysteme (Decision support systems DSS) für die Praxis und für die vorausschauende Beurteilung von Folgen des Klimawandels bereit, entwickelt biologische und biotechnische Pflanzenschutzmassnahmen und stellt die Diagnostik von Quarantäneschädlingen sicher. Dies Arbeiten leisten signifikante Beiträge zu den thematischen Schwerpunkten 'Ökologische Intensivierung' sowie 'Klimaschutz und Anpassung an Klimawandel'. Die Leistungen erfolgen schwerpunktmässig im Bereich des Kernthemas 'Verbesserung der Pflanzenproduktion, insbesondere unter Einbezug von Pflanzenschutz, Sorten und Saat- und Pflanzgut'. In diesem Projekt werden Leistungen bei der Diagnostik von Quarantäneschädlingen zur Verfügung gestellt (in Zusammenarbeit mit FB 12 Diagnostik und Risikobeurteilung Pflanzenschutz) und wissenschaftliche Unterstützung für die kantonalen Fachstellen geboten.

Grundlagen für Prognose und Überwachung von Schädlingen im Obst- und Gemüsebau unter aktuellen und zukünftigen klimatischen Bedingungen

1. Schnelle und zuverlässige Informationen über potenzielle Risiken sind für die Entscheidungsfindung im Pflanzenschutz essenziell, weshalb die verwendeten Prognose- und Überwachungswerkzeuge auf Grundlage der Biologie der betreffenden Schadorganismen ausgebaut und kontinuierlich weiterentwickelt werden müssen. 2. Zudem ergeben sich, mit der als Fakt anerkannten Klimaänderung, massive Änderungen im Schadenspotenzial durch modifizierte Lebenszyklen vorhandener Arten oder durch invasive Arten. Das Prognosesystem SOPRA bietet die Möglichkeit für eine kontinuierliche Weiterentwicklung und Ergänzung an Bedeutung gewinnender Arten. 3. Die entwickelten Artmodelle können weiterhin genutzt werden, um zukünftige klimatische Szenarien zu analysieren. Durch die umfassende Verfügbarkeit und Zuverlässigkeit von SOPRA sind positive Verhaltensänderungen der Praxis zu erwarten. 4. Durch das optimale Timing von Pflanzenschutzmaßnahmen können unnötige PSM-Applikationen vermieden, das Risiko für die Entwicklung von Resistenzen gesenkt und PSM-Rückstände reduziert werden. Gleichzeitig werden Ressourcen sowie Arbeitszeit eingespart und damit die Konkurrenzfähigkeit der Schweizer Spezialkulturen erhöht. 5. Dabei werden mit Einbindung der klimatischen Szenarien zukünftige Probleme frühzeitig identifiziert und bewertet, um entsprechende Maßnahmen zur Erhaltung der Nachhaltigkeit im Pflanzenschutz einzuleiten.

Quantifying Weather and Climate Impacts on Health in Developing Countries (QWECI)

Objective: One of the most dramatic and immediate impacts of climate variation is that on disease, especially the vector-borne diseases that disproportionally affect the poorest people in Africa. Although we can clearly see that, for example, an El Nino event triggers Rift Valley Fever epidemics, we remain poor at understanding why particular areas are vulnerable and how this will change in coming decades, since climate change is likely to cause entirely new global disease distributions. This applies to most vector borne disease. At the same time, we do not know currently the limit of predictability of the specific climate drivers for vector-borne disease using state-of-the-art seasonal forecast models, and how best to use these to produce skilful infection-rate predictions on seasonal timescales. The QWeCI project thus aims to understand at a more fundamental level the climate drivers of the vector-borne diseases of malaria, Rift Valley Fever, and certain tick-borne diseases, which all have major human and livestock health and economic implications in Africa, in order to assist with their short-term management and make projections of their future likely impacts. QWeCI will develop and test the methods and technology required for an integrated decision support framework for health impacts of climate and weather. Uniquely, QWeCl will bring together the best in world integrated weather/climate forecasting systems with heath impacts modelling and climate change research groups in order to build an end-to-end seamless integration of climate and weather information for the quantification and prediction of climate and weather on health impacts in Africa.

Improving Preparedness and Risk Management for flash floods and debris flow events (IMPRINTS)

The aim of IMPRINTS is to contribute to reduce loss of life and economic damage through the improvement of the preparedness and the operational risk management for Flash Flood and Debris Flow (FF/DF) generating events, as well as to contribute to sustainable development through reducing damages to the environment. To achieve this ultimate objective the project is oriented to produce methods and tools to be used by emergency agencies and utility companies responsible for the management of FF/DF risks and associated effects. Impacts of future changes, including climatic, land use and socioeconomic will be analyzed in order to provide guidelines for mitigation and adaptation measures. Specifically, the consortium will develop an integrated probabilistic forecasting FF/ DF system as well as a probabilistic early warning and a rule-based probabilistic forecasting system adapted to the operational use by practitioners. These systems will be tested on five selected flash flood prone areas, two located in mountainous catchments in the Alps, and three in Mediterranean catchments. The IMPRINTS practitioner partners, risk management authorities and utility company managers in duty of emergency management in these areas, will supervise these tests. The development of such systems will be carried out using and capitalizing the results of previous and ongoing research on FF/DF forecasting and warning systems, in which several of the partners have played a prominent role. One major result of the project will be a operational prototype including the tools and methodologies developed under the project. This prototype will be designed under the premise of its ultimate commercialization and use worldwide. The consortium, covering all the actors involved in the complex chain of FF & DF forecasting, has been carefully selected to ensure the achievement of this. Specific actions to exploit and protect the results and the intellectual property of the partners have been also defined.

Models for Assessing and Forecasting the Impact of Environmental Key Pollutants on Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems and Biodiversity - MODELKEY

MODELKEY comprises a mulitdisciplinary approach aiming at developing interlinked and verified predictive modelling tools as well as state-of-the-art effect-assessment and analytical methods generally applicable to European freshwater and marine ecosystems: 1) to assess, forecast, and mitigate the risks of traditional and recently evolving pollutants on fresh water and marine ecosystems and their biodiversity at a river basin and adjacent marine environment scale, 2) to provide early warning strategies on the basis of sub-lethal effects in vitro and in vivo, 3) to provide a better understanding of cause-effect-relationships between changes in biodiversity and the ecological status, as addressed by the Water Framework Directive, and the impact of environmental pollution as causative factor, 4) to provide methods for state-of-the-art risk assessment and decision support systems for the selection of the most efficient management options to prevent effects on biodiversity and to prioritise contamination sources and contaminated sites, 5) to strengthen the scientific knowledge on an European level in the field of impact assessment of environmental pollution on aquatic eco-systems and their biodiversity by extensive training activities and knowledge dissemination to stakeholders and the scientific community. This goal shall be achieved by combining innovative predictive tools for modelling exposure on a river basin scale including the estuary and the coastal zone, for modelling effects on higher levels of biological organisation with powerful assessment tools for the identification of key modes of action, key toxicants and key parameters determining exposure. The developed tools will be verified in case studies representing European key areas including Mediterranean, Western and Central European river basins. An end-user-directed decision support system will be provided for cost-effective tool selection and appropriate risk and site prioritisation.

FP5-EESD, Parameterisation of the aerosol indirect climatic effect - PACE

Objective: Problems to be solved: Reliable predictions of climatic change are impossible unless the magnitude and distribution of the anthropogenic perturbations of the climate can be quantified. The radiative effects of greenhouse gases are well understood; but the indirect effects of anthropogenic aerosols, that operate by altering cloud properties, are potentially significant and are very uncertain. Scientific objectives and approach: The project aims to address these problems directly, using the unrivalled data sets of co-located observations of aerosols, in cloud properties and radiative fluxes obtained during the ACE-2 field campaign. The measurements will be compared with cloud properties and radiative fluxes simulated by several climate models, with the objective of rigorously assessing the models and developing and testing more realistic schemes for representing aerosol-cloud-radiation interactions in climate models. The results of the ACE-2 Cloudy-column experiment will be examined and extended to the scales that are significant for GCM parameterizations, namely 100 km in space and 1/2 hour in time. The quality of the closure, that has been evaluated at the scale of the physical processes, will be evaluated at the GCM scale. The assessment will be focused on the four processes which are identified as the most important for the aerosol indirect effect (AIE), namely aerosol activation, microphysics/radiation interaction, drizzle formation and feedback, and cloud dynamics and homogeneity. The variables used for describing the physical processes will be examined in term of large scale statistics and the corresponding large scale variables will be defined. Special attention will be given to non-linear processes, which cannot be parameterized with the mean value and the standard deviation of the variables, but rather by tail of the distributions, such as vertical velocity for the CCN activation process or droplet concentration for the onset of precipitation. Various solutions will be proposed for the modellers to determine which ones are predictable. The values of these large scale variables will be calculated for each case study. Novel parameterizations based on large scale variables will be developed and tested versus the observations. The results of the data analysis, of satellite image processing and initialization fields extracted from the ECMWF analysis will be merged to form the data set for the models. Expected impacts: The results will contribute to narrowing the large range of uncertainly in model simulations of the indirect effects of anthropogenic aerosols, thereby facilitating more reliable predictions of climatic change. Prime Contractor: Meteo-France, Centre National de Recherches Meteorologiques; Toulouse.

Quantitative Sektoranalyse - Quantitative Analyse und Prognose des Agrarsektors

Ziele: 1. Das System SILAS zur Analyse und Prognose des Agrarsektors verfügt über aktuelle Datengrundlagen und Methoden (BTS, RAUS, Biologischer Landbau, Sömmerungsgebiet). Für das System sind Tests zur Messung der Prognosegüte des Systems entwickelt. 2. Ein Modul zur Darstellung der Umweltwirkungen von politischen Maßnahmen ist verfügbar. 3. Die Produktivitätsentwicklung der Schweizer Landwirtschaft in der Vergangenheit ist bekannt. 4. Grundlagen für die Finanzierungsbotschaft 2008-2011 sind bereitgestellt. 5. Kurzfristige Anfragen des BLW können im Rahmen der verfügbaren Ressourcen beantwortet werden. Problemstellung: Die Agrarpolitik verlangt quantitative, modellgestützte Prognosen über die Entwicklung des landwirtschaftlichen Sektors. Dazu bedarf es des Einsatzes von Modellsystemen, die auf aktualisierte Datengrundlagen und Methoden zurückgreifen und an die wechselnden Bedürfnisse der Politikberatung angepasst sind. Bisher können mit den vorhandenen sektoralen Systemen nur Produktions- und Einkommenseffekte prognostiziert werden. Über die ökologischen Auswirkungen können keine Aussagen gemacht werden. Diese sind allerdings für eine umfassende Beurteilung von agrarpolitischen Maßnahmen notwendig. Auch sind keine Angaben über die Prognosegüte des Modells möglich, welche die Transparenz und Akzeptanz der Modellergebnisse fördern. Im Bereich Analyse der Vergangenheitsentwicklung hat sich gezeigt, dass unzureichende Informationen über die Produktivitätsentwicklung der Landwirtschaft vorliegen. Aussagen über die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit des Agrarsektors werden jedoch zunehmend wichtiger zur Beurteilung der ökonomischen Nachhaltigkeit des schweizerischen Agrarsektors. Im Bereich Prognose gibt es bisher keine Informationen über die sektorale Einkommensentwicklung für den Zeitraum 2008-2011. Diese sind allerdings für die Ausgestaltung des Zahlungsrahmens von 2008-2011 von großer Bedeutung.

FP5-EESD, Extinction Risks and the Re-Introduction of Plant Species in a Fragmented Europe

Objective/Problems to be solved: It is every day experience in many European countries that the landscape is changing rapidly because of the multiplicity of demands on space made by e.g. agriculture, transport, recreation, city expansion. These human activities often develop at the expense of the habitats of wild plants and animals and their chances for survival resulting in a world wide decline in biodiversity. These conflicting demands on space require national but also European measures for the conservation of wildlife as detailed in the EU Habitats Directive and the Flora and Fauna Directive. A lot of conservation effort goes into restoring habitat quality, but we are now beginning to see that this is not enough to save rare and threatened species. This is simply because threatened species have dispersal problems in fragmented habitats. The remnant populations have become too small and too widely dispersed and these species therefore are unable to re-colonise the improved habitats. This is especially true for sessile long-lived organisms such as most plants. As a consequence an alarming, steadily increasing number of plant species appear on national red-data lists. What is lacking however, is an evaluation of the status of endangered plants on a European scale, considering their area of distribution as a whole, as plants have no nationality, in combination with an assessment of the chances for re-introduction as a conservation measure. Such a combination can help to make better environmental impact assessments and to reconcile conflicting demands on space. Scientific objectives and approach: The scientific objectives of the TRANSPLANT program are twofold: to investigate the extinction risks of plant species in fragmenting landscapes across Europe and secondly to develop scientifically sound re-introduction schemes and test their effectiveness. To achieve these goals, we will use a selected number of plant species that differ in their capacity to move across landscapes. This depends on two crucial traits: the longevity of adults and the dispersal capacity of seeds. The first trait determines the capacity to hold territory and function as a source of seeds in the landscape. The second trait affects the capacity to colonise new territory and settle elsewhere. Using these species as our guinea pigs we will built our expertise in a hierarchical, step-like fashion. First we need to know how isolation and small population size in remnants of these species have affected their genetic variation or in other words their capacity to adapt to changing environments. Than we will go on and measure longevity and dispersal capacity in the field in populations that differ in size and degree of isolation across their area of distribution. Prime Contractor: Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, Department of ecology and environment - Faculty of science; Nijmegen.

FP5-EESD, European Database for Ultraviolet Radiation Climatology and Evaluation

Objective/Problems to be solved: Based on measurements of spectral UV irradiance at 35 different locations, we propose to develop a European UV climatology. By the close of this project, some stations will have spectral UV measurements spanning more than ten years. A major aim of this proposal is to analyse long-term data sets for evidence of trends in UV radiation, which may now become visible for the first time. The UV climatology and its analysis will be achieved by a combination of radiation measurements, ancillary data, an appropriate QA/QC programme and radiative transfer modelling. The European UV database, generated in the former SUVDAMA and URRAPPF projects, will be developed further and exploited by this project. The deliverables of this project are relevant to research in atmospheric chemistry, biology, human health and material effects. User-friendly access to the database for these scientific communities will be established. Objectives: to describe a climatology for ultraviolet (UV) radiation in Europe and find evidence for UV trends in Europe, - to extend the European UV database to host more stations and longer time series, - to maintain the European UV database and make its structure more user-friendly, - to provide tools for the easy use of the data in the database and simplified submission of data, - to develop and apply methods for quality assurance at the database, - to develop methods for quality control at the sites and apply them in quality audits, - to develop and apply radiative transfer models for the interpretation of the measurements. Expected impacts: The needs of the end-users with respect to data products that may be obtained from the database will be identified and addressed. A statistical analysis will be made of the spectral data submitted to the European database. With the help of one-dimensional radiative transfer models, climatological maps of the ultraviolet radiation in Europe will be generated. Statistical analyses will be made to show in which wavelength range a trend of UV radiation will first become visible. The number of years required to detect a trend in UV irradiance will be determined based on the uncertainty and variability of measurements at different sites. The dataset will be searched in order to find evidence for such a trend and model studies will be employed to explain the reasons for it. Data from 35 European stations will be submitted to the database in a uniform format. A new computing unit will be used to extend the European UV database to host data for longer periods of time and for new stations. Tools will be developed for efficient submission, searching and extraction of data. Methods will be developed and applied to mark the data in the database with flags which inform about possible instrumental or atmospheric anomalies during the measurement time.

FP5-EESD, Airbone European Regional Observation of the Carbon Balance

Objective/Problem to be solved: Assist the EU in the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol provisions on terrestrial carbon sinks. Objectives and approach: The AEROCARB project is based on a synergy of atmospheric measurements, mesoscale atmospheric transport models, surface emission data, and diagnostic models of land ecosystems carbon exchange. A unified European network of atmospheric CO2 and related tracer concentration measurements will be set up. Such an observational programme is based (i) on the existing 20 monitoring stations at the ground level, to be calibrated and integrated into one coherent ensemble, and (ii) on a new transect of 8 regular biweekly aircraft CO2 soundings between the Atlantic and Eastern Europe. The observational strategy of the science plan is oriented towards the acquisition of three complementary type of atmospheric measurements. The first set of observations will be regular CO2 concentration vertical soundings over the interior of the European continent, to improve retrievals of the continental fluxes in models. The second set of observations will be regular O2 and 13CO2 concentration in air samples to separate the contribution of the ocean fluxes in the European CO2 concentration signal. The third set of observations will be regular 14CO2 and CO measurements, that will separate the fossil sources contribution. The remaining part of the CO2 concentration signal will be interpreted as the effect of net exchange between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere. The modelling strategy consists of developing an inverse modelling system to infer the carbon balance of the European continent. This system relies on the use of 3 mesoscale models of atmospheric CO2 transport that will first be run with prescribed maps of CO2 fluxes and compared to the observations. In a second step, surface CO2 fluxes over large regions of the continent will be optimised against the atmospheric measurements using inverse procedures. Modellers will subsequently use atmospheric measurements collected during the first two years of the project during the last year. Finally, we will carefully assess uncertainties in the inverted fluxes pertaining to the a priori information injected in the inversions, as well as to the atmospheric transport fields. The final deliverable of the project will be a top-down quantitative estimate of the European carbon balance, where fossil and terrestrial components will be constrained separately. Interaction with stakeholders will be strongest at this stage of the project, with the publication of a summary report and the establishment of a web-site with the inversion. Expected impact This project forms part of the CARBOEUROPE cluster which will provide a focus for policy-relevant terrestrial carbon research in the Fifth Framework Programme... Prime Contractor: Centre National de la Reherche Scientifique, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de Environnement, Unite Mixte Cea-CNRS.

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