API src

Found 44 results.

Late-Glacial and Holocene vegetational stability of southern South America

This project focuses on the long-term stability (or otherwise) of vegetation, based on a series of multi-proxy records in southern South America. We will build a network of sites suitable for high-resolution reconstructions of changes in vegetation since the Last Glacial Maximum, and use these to test a null hypothesis that changes in vegetation over the past 14,000 years are driven by internal dynamics rather than external forcing factors. The extent to which the null hypothesis can be falsified will reveal the degree to which we can expect to be able to predict how vegetation is affected by external events, including future climate change. The southern fringes of the South American landmass provide a rare opportunity to examine the development of moorland vegetation with sparse tree cover in a wet, cool temperate climate of the Southern Hemisphere. We present a record of changes in vegetation over the past 17,000 years, from a lake in extreme southern Chile (Isla Santa Inés, Magallanes region, 53°38.97S; 72°25.24W; Fontana, Bennett 2012: The Holocene), where human influence on vegetation is negligible. The western archipelago of Tierra del Fuego remained treeless for most of the Lateglacial period. Nothofagus may have survived the last glacial maximum at the eastern edge of the Magellan glaciers from where it spread southwestwards and established in the region at around 10,500 cal. yr BP. Nothofagus antarctica was likely the earlier colonizing tree in the western islands, followed shortly after by Nothofagus betuloides. At 9000 cal. yr BP moorland communities expanded at the expense of Nothofagus woodland. Simultaneously, Nothofagus species shifted to dominance of the evergreen Nothofagus betuloides and the Magellanic rain forest established in the region. Rapid and drastic vegetation changes occurred at 5200 cal. yr BP, after the Mt Burney MB2 eruption, including the expansion and establishment of Pilgerodendron uviferum and the development of mixed Nothofagus-Pilgerodendron-Drimys woodland. Scattered populations of Nothofagus, as they occur today in westernmost Tierra del Fuego may be a good analogue for Nothofagus populations during the Lateglacial in eastern sites. Climate, dispersal barriers and/or fire disturbance may have played a role controlling the postglacial spread of Nothofagus. Climate change during the Lateglacial and early Holocene was a prerequisite for the expansion of Nothofagus populations and may have controlled it at many sites in Tierra del Fuego. The delayed arrival at the site, with respect to the Holocene warming, may be due to dispersal barriers and/or fire disturbance at eastern sites, reducing the size of the source populations. The retreat of Nothofagus woodland after 9000 cal. yr BP may be due to competitive interactions with bog communities. Volcanic disturbance had a positive influence on the expansion of Pilgerodendron uviferum and facilitated the development of mixed Nothofagus-Pilgerodendron-Drimys woodland.

Züchtung von Rebunterlagen mit hoher Reblausfestigkeit und Anpassung an Trockenheit und Kalk-Chlorose

Eine hohe Resistenz gegen Bodenpathogene, gute Standortanpassung und Veredlungsaffinität sind die entscheidenden Merkmale von Unterlagen. Bei der Pathogenresistenz ist bei Reben die Widerstandsfähigkeit gegen die Reblaus Daktulosphaira vitifoiae essentiell, da die europäische Kulturrebe Vitis vinifera L über keinerlei Resistenzen verfügt und nur an wenigen Standorten ein wurzelechter Anbau möglich ist. Klimaveränderungen erfordern neue Unterlagen mit hoher Reblausfestigkeit und besserer Standortanpassung. Aufgrund der derzeitigen Szenarien werden sowohl Trockenresistenz als auch Toleranz gegen hohe Kalkgehalte insbesondere in Verbindung mit hohem Bodenwassergehalte zukünftig von Bedeutung sein. Hierfür werden entsprechende Kreuzungen vorgenommen, die Sämlinge aufgezogen, auf ihre Reblausfestigkeit getestet und anschießend Prüfungen der Wurzelungs- und Veredlungsfähigkeit vorgenommen. Anschließend wird die Witterungs- und Bodenanpassung der Zuchtstämme insbesondere auf Trocken- und Kalkstandorten untersucht. Ziel ist die Entwicklung verschiedener Unteralgen, die eine vollständige Reblausresistenz mit hohen Trockenheits- und/oder Kalktoleranz kombinieren.

The scalar organization of environmental governance: an institutionalist perspective on the transformation of water and marine governance in the European Union

The project aims to theorize the scalar organization of natural resource governance in the European Union. This research agenda is inspired by critical geographers' work on the politics of scale. The research will examine an analytical framework derived from theories of institutional change and multi-level govern-ance to fill this theoretical gap. Furthermore, it will review conceptualizations of the state in institutional economics, evaluate their adequacy to capture the role of the state in the dynamics identified, and develop them further. The described processes may imply shifts in administrative levels, shifts in relations between different levels and changes in spatial delimitations of competent jurisdictions that result, for example, from decentralization or the introduction of river basin oriented administrative structures. The research investigates the implications of two European Directives: the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). They both have potentially great significance for the organization of marine and water governance at the level of Member States and below, and adhere to similar regulatory ideas for achieving good ecological status of waters. A multiple case study on changes in the scalar reorganization of marine and water governance that result from the implementation of the Directives will be carried out. It will rely on qualitative and quantitative data gathering based on semi-structured interviews and review of secondary and tertiary sources looking at Portugal, Spain, and Germany. It specifically addresses the role of social ecological transactions, the structure of decision making processes and the role of changes in contextual factors (such as ideologies, interdependent institutions and technology).

CFK-Recycling in der Kompetenzregion Augsburg

The increasing proportion of carbon fibre reinforced plastics (CFRP) in different branches of industry will result in an increasingly larger quantity of CFRP wastes in future. With regard to improved management of natural resources, it is necessary to add these fibres that require energy-intensive production to effective recycling management. But high-quality material recycling is only ecoefficient if the recycled fibres can be used to produce new high-quality and marketable products. Tests carried out up to now indicate that very good results can be expected for large-scale recycling of carbon fibres by means of pyrolysis. The waste pyrolysis plant (WPP) operated in Burgau is the only large-scale pyrolysis plant for municipal wastes in Germany. Use of this plant to treat CFRP wastes represents a unique opportunity for the whole Southern German economy and in particular the Augsburg economic region. In a study funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of the Environment and Health ('Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Umwelt und Gesundheit'), the specific implementation options for the recovery of carbon fibres from composites by means of large-scale pyrolysis have been under investigation since November 2010. To this end, in the first step a development study was carried out, which in particular examined the options for modifying the Burgau WPP for the recycling of CFRP. The knowledge acquired from the pyrolysis tests, the fibre tests and the economic feasibility study confirmed the positive assessment of the overall concept of CFRP recycling in Burgau. As an overall result, unlimited profitability was found for all scenarios with regard to investments in CFRP recycling in Burgau WPP. The work on the development study was carried out by bifa Umweltinstitut GmbH together with the Augsburg-based 'function integrated lightweight construction project group ('Funktionsintegrierter Leichtbau' - FIL) of the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology (ICT). Methods: analysis and moderation of social processes, economy and management consulting, process engineering

Identification of groundwater nitrogen point source contribution through combined distribute temperature sensing and in-situ UV photometry

Agriculture is the major contributor of nitrogen to ecosystems, both by organic and inorganic fertilizers. Percolation of nitrate to groundwater and further transport to surface waters is assumed to be one of the major pathways in the fate of this nitrogen. The quantification of groundwater and associated nitrate flux to streams is still challenging. In particular because we lack understanding of the spatial distribution and temporal variability of groundwater and associated NO3- fluxes. In this preliminary study we will focus on the identification and quantification of groundwater and associated nitrate fluxes by combining high resolution distributed fiber-optic temperature sensing (DTS) with in situ UV photometry (ProPS). DTS is a new technique that is capable to measure temperature over distances of km with a spatial resolution of ca1 m and an accuracy of 0.01 K. It has been applied successfully to identify and quantify sources of groundwater discharge to streams. ProPS is a submersible UV process photometer, which uses high precision spectral analyses to provide single substance concentrations, in our case NO3-, at minute intervals and a detection limit of less than 0.05 mg l-1 (ca.0.01 mg NO3--Nl-1). We will conduct field experiments using artificial point sources of lateral inflow to test DTS and ProPS based quantification approaches and estimate their uncertainty. The selected study area is the Schwingbach catchment in Hessen, Germany, which has a good monitoring infrastructure. Preliminary research on hydrological fluxes and field observations indicate that the catchment favors the intended study.

Entwicklung von Rebklonen mit besserer Klimaanpassung

Leistungsfähiges Pflanzgut mit guter Boden- und Klimaanpassung bildet die Grundlage der einer umweltgerechten Pflanzenproduktion. Dies trifft in gleicher Weise auf den Weinbau zu. Neben der Globalisierung der Märkte gehört sicherlich die Klimaveränderung zu den größten Herausforderungen der Gegenwart. Das größte Problem sind in zunehmendem Maß eine wärmere Witterung kombiniert mit Starkregenereignisse während der Traubenreifung und die dadurch ausgelöste Traubenfäule. Wegen der besonderen Bedeutung von Weinlandschaften für Tourismus und Wirtschaft kommt dem Weinanbau hierbei eine besondere gesellschaftliche Bedeutung zu. Die Sicherung der Produktion von gesunden Trauben steht daher an erster Stelle. Ein lockerer Traubenaufbau durch längere Beerenstielchen und/oder kleinere Beeren sowie festere Beerenschale können den Fäulnisbefall stark reduzieren. Sie sind damit ein hervorragendes Resistenzmerkmal und können den Einsatz von Spezial-Botrytiziden erheblich vermindern. Solche Formen der apparenten Resistenz sind sehr stabil, da der Pathogen sie nur schwer überwinden kann und daher hervorragend für langlebige Kulturpflanzen, wie die Weinrebe geeignet. Das Fachgebiet entwickelt von den traditionell in Deutschland angebauten Rebsorten Klone mit lockerem Traubenaufbau und damit einhergehender hoher Resistenz gegen Traubenfäulen. Hierzu wird Zuchtmaterial, das im Rahmen dieses oder weiterer Projekte gesammelt wurde, auf seine Widerstandsfähigkeit gegen Traubenfäulen und weitere weinbaulich relevante Eigenschaften getestet. Ziel ist die Entwicklung von Klonen traditioneller Rebsorten mit hoher Traubenfäuleresistenz kombiniert mit einem stabilen Ertrag und hoher Trauben und Weinqualität, um deutschen Winzern entsprechendes Pflanzgut zur Verfügung zu stellen und damit einerseits die Applikation von Fungiziden zu reduzieren und gleichzeitig die Konkurrenzfähigkeit der heimischen Produktion an ihren traditionellen Standorten sichern zu helfen.

Analysing climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies for sustainable rural land use and landscape developments in Austria (CC-ILA)

Changes in European agricultural landscapes have gained on intensification in the second half of the last century. Among others, they are driven by global change phenomena such as climate change, demographic change and migration, increasing global bio-energy demands and changing human diets as well as by trade liberalisation, technological progress, and leakage effects of land use policy interventions. Farmers usually respond to such changes by adapting production and land use systems to efficiently utilize and manage their farm resource endowments. However, this process often leads to adverse impacts on the diversity of agricultural landscapes and environmental qualities. EU policies have been formulated as a reaction to singular or sectoral problems (e.g. the Common Agricultural Policy, the Water Framework Directive, the Nitrates Directive, NATURA2000), which are usually differently implemented among member states by using a variety of legislative or incentive based instruments. Consequently, more coordination among policies is required to minimize the trade-offs between different land use policy targets (i.e. land conservation versus boosting biomass production), and between private (adaptive) and societal (mitigative) land use benefits. Mitigation and adaptation are often separately analysed due to the nature of the problem i.e. mitigation is often considered as public good versus adaptation as private or club good. However, it is necessary to consider both in assessing the mutual benefits of cost-effective land uses and farm mitigation and adaptation measures, which mainly depend on spatial heterogeneity of natural and farming conditions. Consequently, it is important to consider bio-physical, ecological, and economic relationships in assessing the mitigative (public) and adaptive (private) potentials and trade-offs of alternative land uses and farm management measures.In this project we implement a data-model-policy fusion concept, which shall guarantee cost-effective mitigation and adaptation of farms and sustainable landscape and biodiversity developments in the context of climate, market, and policy instrument changes. The concept is applied to two case-study landscapes in the Mostviertel region in Austria and contains an integrated spatially explicit modelling framework to simulate the land use changes at field, farm, and landscape level as well as cost-effective farm mitigation and adaptation portfolios. The land use changes are assessed with farm economic, biodiversity, abiotic, and landscape indicators including GIS-modelling and field observations. Biodiversity effects are central in the integrated assessment acknowledging the roles of landscape structure and land use intensity. Geo-referenced land uses and land use attributes are a major interface in the data-model-policy fusion concept. The results will help farmers and regional stakeholders to identify best management practices for climate change mitigation and adaptation i

Upwind: Development of Improved Wind Turbine Noise Prediction Tools for Low Noise Airfoil Design

The noise regulations of various countries urge wind turbine manufacturers to reduce the aerodynamical noise emission of their turbines. To reduce the greenhouse gas emission, wind energy has been put in a very front position. EWEA estimates 12percent of worlds energy may come from wind turbines by the year 2020 (approx. 1,260,000 MW). This means wider deployment of wind turbines, at lower wind speed sites i.e. close to people & transmission lines. To reduce the transmission cost between production site and customer, onshore installations are still a cheaper solution. One of the biggest barriers for developing onshore turbines is the noise which has a negative impact on people's daily life. Thus, the goal of developing onshore wind turbines is to design silent wind turbines and silent wind farms and at the same time have a good aerodynamic efficiency. Noise emitted from an operating wind turbine can be divided into two parts, mechanical noise and flow induced noise. Mechanical noise can sufficiently be reduced by conventional engineering approaches but flow-induced noise is more complex and need more focus. The noise mechanisms associated with flow-induced noise emission have different sources. These are, inflow turbulence noise, tip noise, laminar boundary layer separation noise, blunt trailing-edge noise (BTE) and for turbulent boundary-layer trailing-edge interaction noise (TBL-TE). Acoustic field measurements within the European research project SIROCCO showed that the TBL-TE noise is the most dominant noise mechanism for modern wind turbines. Thus, accurate prediction and reduction of the TBL-TE noise is the main focus of the acoustics airfoil design methods for wind turbine rotor blade. For developing 'silent' airfoils, a routinely design fast, less expensive and accurate prediction methodology is desired. In this respect, simplified theoretical model would be the first candidate, and therefore the main goal is development of an accurate and efficient noise prediction model for the low noise wind turbine blade design.

Infrastructure guidelines for environmental railway performance (INFRAGUIDER)

Objective: InfraGuidER Coordinated Action primary objective is to define the guidelines for developing an effective European method/tool for the environmental impact evaluation of the railway infrastructure (existing and new). Despite a similar process has been already provided for the rolling stock the railway infrastructure is a more complex system where in the last year a silent revolution has been performed in order to face the high performances of trains (high speed trains), to attract the freight transport, to reduce the maintenance and operational costs, to comply with the local, regional regulation in terms of environmental impact. To avoid that this revolution will create a great unbalance among regions and to support the know-how and best practices transfer it is important to assess by a consensus process at European level the following items: the current state of environmental performance within the railway sector, and to highlight the criticalities to become effective and practical for the internal Environmental Management system implemented by railway companies and suppliers; the infrastructure functional subsystems and interfaces from the environment point of view; balance of goods in terms of material flow, environmental performance indicators EPIs and relevant ranking. Finally, as result of the three steps, the specification for the environmental part of a sustainability management system is provided and disseminated to end users (railway infrastructure managers and international organisations), to suppliers and academia (through EURNEX poles of excellence). According to this description InfraGuidER will be delivered in four main work packages. Other two work packages related to the management and communication/dissemination of the project are included in order to guarantee and to monitor the quality and effectiveness of the coordination mechanism. InfraGuidER fits with SST.2007.1.2.1 The greening of transport-specific industrial processes. Prime Contractor: Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per i Transporti e la Logistica; Genova; Italia.

Integrated Sink Enhancement Assessment

Sink enhancement measures could not only turn out to be instrumental to attain climate mitigation goals, but could simultaneously become a major driver of how our natural environment is managed. A thorough integrated economic and environmental assessment of the economic and sustainable potentials in the area of land use change in agriculture and forestry has not yet been carried out. In order to support the international negotiation process and for the development of good policies the Integrated Sink Enhancement Assessment (INSEA) projects objective is to develop an analytical tool to assess economic and environmental effects for enhancing carbon sinks and greenhouse gas abatement measures on agricultural and forest lands. The approach is centered on spatially explicit databases that will allow the calculation of 'cost-landscapes' taking on an engineering approach to integrated costs computation of additional sink enhancement measures and negative emission technologies. The various model structures will be applied to detailed European data sets and less detailed global data sets assessing cost functions and long-term scenarios of sink enhancement measures. Concise policy conclusions from the modeling exercise will aim at supporting the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol commitments as well as post Kyoto negotiations. In the proposal we advocate a spatially explicit approach that is motivated by the fact that LULUCF activities are, by their very nature, spatial. We propose a deterministic approach for the cost calculations as well as a dynamic, and uncertainty (risk)-based assessment in a multiple input/output environment. We believe that such a multi-faceted approach is necessary to guarantee robustness and consistency across a variety of decision rules for sustainable greenhouse gas management of land resources.

1 2 3 4 5