Introduction: In Malaysia, excessive nutrients from livestock waste management systems are currently released to the environment. Particularly, large amounts of manure from intensive pig production areas are being excreted daily and are not being fully utilised. Alternatively, the excess manure can be applied as an organic fertiliser source in neighbouring cropping systems on the small landholdings of the pig farms to improve soil fertility so that its nutrients will be available for crop uptake instead of being discharged into water streams. Thus, there is a need for better tools to analyse the present situation, to evaluate and monitor alternative livestock production systems and manure management scenarios, and to support farmers in the proper management of manure and fertiliser application. Such tools are essential to quantify, and assess nutrient fluxes, manure quality and content, manure storage and application rate to the land as well as its environmental effects. Several computer models of animal waste management systems to assist producers and authorities are now available. However, it is felt that more development is needed to adopt such models to the humid tropics and conditions of Malaysia and other developing countries in the region. Objectives: The aim is to develop a novel model to evaluate nutrient emission scenarios and the impact of livestock waste at the landscape or regional level in humid tropics. The study will link and improve existing models to evaluate emission of N to the atmosphere, and leaching of nutrients to groundwater and surface water. The simulation outputs of the models will be integrated with a GIS spatial analysis to model the distribution of nutrient emission, leaching and appropriate manure application on neighbouring crop lands and as an information and decision support tool for the relevant users.
(1) Terrestrische Biota der Antarktis sind durch geografische Isolation und inselhafte Verteilung geprägt. Die isolierte Lage der Antarktis und die Beschränkung auf weit voneinander entfernte kleine Habitatflecken haben zu einem hohen Endemiten-Anteil und einer starken Regionalisierung der Fauna und Flora geführt. Genetische Differenzierung, lokale Anpassung und die Evolution kryptischer Arten sind die Folge. Die Biodiversitäts-Konvention (CBD) betrachtet genetische Diversität als einen Eckpfeiler biologischer Vielfalt und stellt sie damit in eine Reihe mit der Diversität von Arten und Ökosystemen. Durch Einschleppung ortsfremder Arten und Homogenisierung bislang getrennter Genpools bedroht der Mensch jedoch zunehmend diese Isolation und genetische Differenzierung vieler antarktischer Biota. (2) Obwohl Flechten als wichtigste Primärproduzenten antarktische terrestrische Lebensräume dominieren, fehlen zurzeit Daten zu ihrer genetischen Struktur und Diversität. Der Umfang inter- und intrakontinentalen Genflusses ist bisher völlig unbekannt. Es ist deswegen derzeit unmöglich, den aktuellen und zukünftigen menschlichen Einfluss auf antarktische Flechtenpopulationen auch nur annähernd abzuschätzen.(3) Wir schlagen vor, mittels molekulargenetischer Daten die populationsgenetische Struktur von sechs weit verbreiteten Flechtenarten mit unterschiedlichen Ausbreitungsstrategien zu untersuchen. Dabei soll die Nullhypothese überprüft werden, dass Flechtenpopulationen genetisch nicht differenziert sind. Zusätzlich wollen wir abschätzen, ob menschliche Aktivitäten zur Einschleppung ortsfremder Arten oder Genotypen und zur Homogenisierung von Genpools beitragen. Hierfür sollen Lokalitäten mit hohem und niedrigem menschlichen Einfluss verglichen werden. Das Projekt schafft damit unverzichtbare Grunddaten für die Entwicklung von Schutzstrategien in der Antarktis.
The present-day configuration of Indonesia and SE Asia is the results of a long history of tectonic movements, volcanisms and global eustatic sea-level changes. Not indifferent to these dynamics, fauna and flora have been evolving and dispersing following a complicate pattern of continent-sea changes to form what are today defined as Sundaland and Wallacea biogeographical regions. The modern intraannual climate of Indonesia is generally described as tropical, seasonally wet with seasonal reversals of prevailing low-level winds (Asian-Australian monsoon). However at the interannual scale a range of influences operating over varying time scales affect the local climate in respect of temporal and spatial distribution of rainfall. Vegetation generally reflects climate and to simplify it is possible to distinguish three main ecological elements in the flora of Malaysia: everwet tropical, seasonally dry tropical (monsoon) and montane. Within those major ecological groups, a wide range of specific local conditions caused a complex biogeography which has and still attract the attention of botanists and biogeographers worldwide. Being one of the richest regions in the Worlds in terms of species endemism and biodiversity, Indonesia has recently gone through intensive transformation of previously rural/natural lands for intensive agriculture (oil palm, rubber, cocoa plantations and rice fields). Climate change represents an additional stress. Projected climate changes in the region include strengthening of monsoon circulation and increase in the frequency and magnitude of extreme rainfall and drought events. The ecological consequences of these scenarios are hard to predict. Within the context of sustainable management of conservation areas and agro-landscapes, Holocene palaeoecological and palynological studies provide a valuable contribution by showing how the natural vegetation present at the location has changed as a consequence of climate variability in the long-term (e.g. the Mid-Holocene moisture maximum, the modern ENSO onset, Little Ice Age etc.). The final aim of my PhD research is to compare the Holocene history of Jambi province and Central Sulawesi. In particular: - Reconstructing past vegetation, plant diversity and climate dynamics in the two study areas Jambi (Sumatra) and Lore Lindu National Park (Sulawesi) - Comparing the ecological responses of lowland monsoon swampy rainforest (Sumatra) and everwet montane rainforests (Sulawesi) to environmental variability (vulnerability/resilience) - Investigating the history of human impact on the landscape (shifting cultivation, slash and burn, crop cultivation, rubber and palm oil plantation) - Assessing the impact and role of droughts (El Niño) and fires - Adding a historical perspective to the evaluation of current and future changes.
The majority of the worlds forests has undergone some form of management, such as clear-cut or thinning. This management has direct relevance for global climate: Studies estimate that forest management emissions add a third to those from deforestation, while enhanced productivity in managed forests increases the capacity of the terrestrial biosphere to act as a sink for carbon dioxide emissions. However, uncertainties in the assessment of these fluxes are large. Moreover, forests influence climate also by altering the energy and water balance of the land surface. In many regions of historical deforestation, such biogeophysical effects have substantially counteracted warming due to carbon dioxide emissions. However, the effect of management on biogeophysical effects is largely unknown beyond local case studies. While the effects of climate on forest productivity is well established in forestry models, the effects of forest management on climate is less understood. Closing this feedback cycle is crucial to understand the driving forces behind past climate changes to be able to predict future climate responses and thus the required effort to adapt to it or avert it. To investigate the role of forest management in the climate system I propose to integrate a forest management module into a comprehensive Earth system model. The resulting model will be able to simultaneously address both directions of the interactions between climate and the managed land surface. My proposed work includes model development and implementation for key forest management processes, determining the growth and stock of living biomass, soil carbon cycle, and biophysical land surface properties. With this unique tool I will be able to improve estimates of terrestrial carbon source and sink terms and to assess the susceptibility of past and future climate to combined carbon cycle and biophysical effects of forest management. Furthermore, representing feedbacks between forest management and climate in a global climate model could advance efforts to combat climate change. Changes in forest management are inevitable to adapt to future climate change. In this process, is it possible to identify win-win strategies for which local management changes do not only help adaptation, but at the same time mitigate global warming by presenting favorable effects on climate? The proposed work opens a range of long-term research paths, with the aim of strengthening the climate perspective in the economic considerations of forest management and helping to improve local decisionmaking with respect to adaptation and mitigation.
The formation of biogeochemical interfaces in soils is controlled, among other factors, by the type of particle surfaces present and the assemblage of organic matter and mineral particles. Therefore, the formation and maturation of interfaces is studied with artificial soils which are produced in long-term biogeochemical laboratory incubation experiments (3, 6, 12, 18 months. Clay minerals, iron oxides and charcoal are used as major model components controlling the formation of interfaces because they exhibit high surface area and microporosity. Soil interface characteristics have been analyzed by several groups involved in the priority program for formation of organo-mineral interfaces, sorptive and thermal interface properties, microbial community structure and function. Already after 6 months of incubation, the artificial soils exhibited different properties in relation to their composition. A unique dataset evolves on the development and the dynamics of interfaces in soil in the different projects contributing to this experiment. An integrated analysis based on a conceptual model and multivariate statistics will help to understand overall processes leading to the biogeochemical properties of interfaces in soil, that are the basis for their functions in ecosystems. Therefore, we propose to establish an integrative project for the evaluation of data obtained and for publication of synergistic work, which will bring the results to a higher level of understanding.
The development of sustainable and efficient energy conversion processes at interfaces is at the center of the rapidly growing field of basic energy science. How successful this challenge can be addressed will ultimately depend on the acquired degree of molecular-level understanding. In this respect, the severe knowledge gap in electro- or photocatalytic conversions compared to corresponding thermal processes in heterogeneous catalysis is staggering. This discrepancy is most blatant in the present status of predictive-quality, viz. first-principles based modelling in the two fields, which largely owes to multifactorial methodological issues connected with the treatment of the electrochemical environment and the description of the surface redox chemistry driven by the photo-excited charges or external potentials.Successfully tackling these complexities will advance modelling methodology in (photo)electrocatalysis to a similar level as already established in heterogeneous catalysis, with an impact that likely even supersedes the one seen there in the last decade. A corresponding method development is the core objective of the present proposal, with particular emphasis on numerically efficient approaches that will ultimately allow to reach comprehensive microkinetic formulations. Synergistically combining the methodological expertise of the two participating groups we specifically aim to implement and advance implicit and mixed implicit/explicit solvation models, as well as QM/MM approaches to describe energy-related processes at solid-liquid interfaces. With the clear objective to develop general-purpose methodology we will illustrate their use with applications to hydrogen generation through water splitting. Disentangling the electro- resp. photocatalytic effect with respect to the corresponding dark reaction, this concerns both the hydrogen evolution reaction at metal electrodes like Pt and direct water splitting at oxide photocatalysts like TiO2. Through this we expect to arrive at a detailed mechanistic understanding that will culminate in the formulation of comprehensive microkinetic models of the light- or potential-driven redox process. Evaluating these models with kinetic Monte Carlo simulations will unambiguously identify the rate-determining and overpotential-creating steps and therewith provide the basis for a rational optimization of the overall process. As such our study will provide a key example of how systematic method development in computational approaches to basic energy sciences leads to breakthrough progress and serves both fundamental understanding and cutting-edge application.
The magnetosphere of a planet is controlled by a number of factors such as the intrinsic magnetic field, the atmosphere and ionosphere, and the solar wind. Different combinations of these control factors are at work at the terrestrial planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, hence they form a very suitable set for quantitative comparative studies. A significant intrinsic dipolar magnetic field is present only on Earth and on Mercury. However, the configuration at Mercury differs considerably from that at Earth because Mercury does not support an atmosphere and ionosphere, the dipolar field is much weaker, the solar wind denser, and the interplanetary magnetic field stronger. Both Mars and Venus have atmospheres but lack a global planetary magnetic field, with regional crustal magnetization being present on Mars. This proposal aims at investigating and comparing electrical current systems in the space environments of terrestrial planets using magnetic vector data collected by orbiting spacecraft such as Venus Express, Mars Global Surveyor, CHAMP (Earth), and MESSENGER (Mercury). We propose to construct data-driven and physically meaningful representations that reveal and quantify the influence of various control factors. To achieve this, we will tailor Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) analysis and other multivariate methods to the specifics of planetary magnetic field observations. In contrast to representations that build on predefined functions like spherical harmonics, basis functions in the EOF approach are derived directly from the data. EOFs are designed to extract dominant coherent variations for further interpretation in terms of known physical phenomena, and then, in a regression step, for modeling using suitable control variables. The EOF methodology thus allows quantifying the relative importance of control factors for each planet individually, and thus contributes to the solution of topical science questions. The resulting empirical models will facilitate comparative studies of current systems at the terrestrial planets.
This subproject aims at the development of spectral electrical impedance tomography (EIT) as a non-destructive tool for the imaging, characterization and monitoring of root structure and function in the subsoil at the field scale. The approach takes advantage of the capacitive properties of the soil-root interface associated with induced electrical polarization processes at the root membrane. These give rise to a characteristic electrical signature (impedance spectrum), which is measurable in an imaging framework using EIT. In the first project phase, the methodology is developed by means of controlled rhizotron experiments in the laboratory. The goal is to establish quantitative relationships between characteristics of the measured impedance spectra and parameters describing root system morphology, root growth and activity in dependence on root type, soil type and structure (with/without biopores), as well as ambient conditions. Parallel to this work, sophisticated EIT inversion algorithms, which take the natural characteristics of root system architecture into account when solving the inherent inverse problem, will be developed and tested in numerical experiments. Thus the project will provide an understanding of electrical impedance spectra in terms of root structure and function, as well as specifically adapted EIT inversion algorithms for the imaging and monitoring of root dynamics. The method will be applied at the field scale (central field trial in Klein-Altendorf), where non-destructive tools for the imaging and monitoring of subsoil root dynamics are strongly desired, but at present still lacking.
In the Bavarian Forest National Park a brief, but intense storm event on 1 August 1983 created large windfall areas. The windfall ecosystems within the protection zone of the park were left develop without interference; outside this zone windfall areas were cleared of dead wood but not afforested. A set of permanent plots (transect design with 10 to 10 m plots) was established in 1988 in spruce forests of wet and cool valley bottoms in order to document vegetation development. Resampling shall take place every five years; up to now it was done in 1993 and 1998. On cleared areas an initial raspberry (Rubus idaeus) shrub community was followed by pioneer birch (Betula pubescens, B. pendula) woodland, a sequence well known from managed forest stands. In contrast to this, these two stages were restricted to root plates of fallen trees in uncleared windfalls; here shade-tolerant tree species of the terminal forest stages established rather quickly from saplings that had already been present in the preceeding forest stand. Soil surface disturbances are identified to be causal to the management pathway of forest development, wereas the untouched pathway is caused by relatively low disturbance levels. The simulation model FORSKA-M is used to analyse different options of further stand development with a simulation time period of one hundred years.
Perennial fodder cropping potentially increases subsoil biopore density by formation of extensive root systems and temporary soil rest. We will quantify root length density, earthworm abundance and biopore size classes after Medicago sativa, Cichorium intybus and Festuca arundinacea grown for 1, 2 and 3 years respectively in the applied research unit's Central Field Trial (CeFiT) which is established and maintained by our working group. Shoot parameters including transpiration, gas exchange and chlorophyll fluorescence will frequently be recorded. Precrop effects on oilseed rape and cereals will be quantified with regard to crop yield, nutrient transfer and H2-release. The soil associated with biopores (i.e. the driloshpere) is generally rich in nutrients as compared to the bulk soil and is therefore supposed to be a potential hot spot for nutrient acquisition. However, contact areas between roots and the pore wall have been reported to be low. It is still unclear to which extent the nutrients present in the drilosphere are used and which potential relevance subsoil biopores may have for the nutrient supply of crops. We will use a flexible videoscope to determine the root-soil contact in biopores. Nitrogen input into the drilosphere by earthworms and potential re-uptake of nitrogen from the drilosphere by subsequent crops with different rooting systems (oilseed rape vs. cereals) will be quantified using 15N as a tracer.
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