The project aims at achieving a better understanding of the processes that drive or limit the response of grassland systems in a world of increasing atmospheric pCO2. We will test the hypothesis that the previously shown increase in below-ground allocation of C under elevated pCO2 provides the necessary energy excess and will stimulate free-living N2 fixers in a low N grassland environment. The project thus aims at assessing the occurrence and importance of free-living N2 fixers under elevated pCO2 and identify the associated microbial communities involved in order to better understand ecosystems response and sustainability of grassland systems. This project had the last opportunity to obtain soil samples from a grassland ecosystem adapted to long-term (10 year) elevated atmospheric pCO2 as the Swiss FACE experiment. The project aims to identify the relevant components of free-living diazotrophs of the microbial community using 15N stable isotope - DNA probing.
Waterborne sewage system has proven to be inappropriate to solve sanitation needs in developing countries. Approximately 90 percentt of city sewage in developing countries today is discharged untreated, polluting rivers, lakes and coastal areas (Winblad, 1997). With increasing population density and the resultant groundwater pollution, conventional decentralized disposal systems such as latrines and seepage pits are not viable alternatives either. Many cities are short of water and subject to critical environmental degradation (Niemczynowicz, 1996). Conventional sanitation technologies based on flush toilets, sewers, treatment and discharge cannot solve the problems in urban areas anymore. A sustainable sanitation and wastewater management system is urgently needed in order to address these issues. Ecological sanitation (Ecosan) is proposed as an alternative system to solve the following problems: lack of sanitation and water body contamination by pathogens from human waste. Ecosan does not only provide sanitation facilities for the people, but also seeks to protect public health, prevents water pollution and at the same time returns valuable nutrients to the soil so that it also helps to ensure food security and contributes to the objectives of sustainable development. The objective of this research is to search for a sustainable sanitation and human waste management system that is appropriate to be applied in poor income people living in densely populated urban areas in Indonesia. As Ecological Sanitation has not been applied in Indonesia before, this dissertation also aims to investigate its effectiveness and community acceptance in Indonesia. Two other existing systems are also studied as the comparison, which are the conventional septic tank system and the decentralized wastewater system (Dewats). All of these sanitation systems are assessed based on three sustainability criteria: economical, environmental and social.
The main objective of the project is to investigate, assess and enhance the potentiality of promising technological options (i.e., technologies, processes and concepts) for the treatment of industrial wastewater with the specific aim to provide tailor-mad e solutions to end-users for a wide range of wastewaters. Such solutions will be essentially based on the optimised integration of the investigated options and on technological improvements with respect to treatment system components, operation and control. Referring to the investigated options and the envisaged technological solutions, the project's goals are: -Investigating and enhancing the performances of promising wastewater treatment options such as aerobic granulation, integrated advanced oxidation processes (AOP) and membrane-based hybrid processes -Achieving fundamental and technological knowledge advancements necessary for advanced wastewater treatment application in different industrial sectors -Assessing the economic and environmental sustainability of promising wastewater treatment options -Developing integrated tailor-made solutions for end-users in different industrial sectors -Transferring the developed know-how to potential end-users inside and outside the project -Favouring their actual implementation for enhancing the EU Water Industry competitiveness. In order to achieve such goals, coordinated research activities will be carried out on selected options treating different wastewater. The experiences from such activities will be merged to define tailor-made solutions for end-users in different industrial sectors. A major goal will be the definition of treatment needs and framework conditions for a wide range of wastewaters based on the specific features of the options investigate d (i.e., aerobic granulation, AOP combined processes, membrane contactors, membrane chemical reactors). Prime Contractor: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Department of Bari, Water Research Institute, Roma, Italien.
The overall objective of ERAP harm is to improve and complement existing knowledge and procedures for the environmental risk assessment (ERA) of human and veterinary pharmaceuticals. Based on EU regulatory frameworks on the ERA of pharmaceuticals and on the outcome of previous projects ERAP harm will address the following aspects: It will investigate previously unstudied major routes leading to exposure of the terrestrial and aquatic environment and subsequent fate of pharmaceuticals in surface water and sediment. Factors and processes affecting the behavior of pharmaceuticals in the environment will be studied on the laboratory, semi-field and fieldscale. A scenario-based exposure assessment system will be developed for predicting concentrations of pharmaceuticals in soils, surface waters and sediments and leaching to groundwater. It will be investigated if environmentally relevant concentrations of pharmaceuticals pose a risk to aquatic and terrestrial organisms. Pharmaceuticals and selected transformation products will be screened using in vitro and low complexity bioanalytical tests in order to provide a first hazard characterization and to target higher tier testing. Higher tier test methods will be improved and applied for detecting the effects of long-term, low-level exposure to pharmaceuticals on aquatic and terrestrial invertebrates and fish. It will be evaluated if information on pharmaco- and toxicodynamics in mammalian species can be used to predict effects of pharmaceuticals on environmental organisms. Moreover, the effects of antibiotics on microbial communities will be studied with a main focus on the spread of genetically encoded resistance. Based on the developed approaches recommendations will be provided on how to improve the ERA procedures for pharmaceuticals. A guidance document will be compiled that will be made available to regulators, industry and the scientific community.
Backgrond: The mild climate of north western Europe is, to a large extent, governed by the influx of warm Atlantic water to the Nordic Seas. Model simulations predict that this influx and the return of flow of cold deep water to the Atlantic may weaken as a consequence of global warming. MOEN will assess the effect of anthropogenic climate change on the Meridional Overturning Circulation by monitoring the flux exchanges between the North Atlantic and the Nordic Seas and by assessing its present and past variability in relation to the atmospheric and thermohaline forcing. This information will be used to improve predictions of regional and global climate changes. MOEN is a self-contained project of the intercontinental Arctic-Subarctic Ocean Flux (ASOF) Array for European Climate project, which aims at monitoring and understanding the oceanic fluxes of heat, salt and freshwater at high northern latitudes and their effect on global ocean circulation and climate. MOEN will contribute to a better long-term observing system to monitor the exchanges between the North Atlantic and the Nordic Seas from direct and continuous measurements in order to allow an assessment of the effect of anthropogenic climate change on the Meridional Overturning Circulation. This we will be done by measuring and modelling fluxes and characteristics of total Atlantic inflow to the Nordic Seas and of the Iceland-Scotland component of the overflow from the Nordic Seas to the Atlantic. General objectives: To contribute to a better long-term observing system to monitor the exchanges between the North Atlantic and the Nordic Seas. To assess the effect of anthropogenic climate change on the Meridional Overturning Circulation. Modelling objectives (WP4, IfM): To model the flow field, the temperature and salinity distribution and the heat fluxes for an area focused on the Iceland-Faroe Ridge, the Faroe Bank and Faroe-Shetland Channel and Wyville-Thomson Ridge. To model long term variations of the locally induced and far field circulation and T/S distribution in order to understand climate variations.
The project aims at supporting the implementation of the proposed Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the management of waste from the extractive industries 2003/0107. The Directive was prepared following several major accidents with a serious impact on the environment, and it has the purpose of ensuring a safer management of the mining waste facilities, so that such accidents will not occur in the future. This project addresses particularly Article 9, which provides for the classification of waste facilities with respect to the possible consequences of an accident, and respectively the Annex II: Characterisation of mining waste and Annex III: Criteria for the classification of waste facilities. The activities of the project are divided into four major work packages as follows: - Preparation of a Methodology for the Characterisation of Mining Waste - Elaboration of a Risk Assessment Methodology for the Classification of Mining Waste Facilities, including Old/Abandoned Mining Waste Facilities - Review of Techniques for the Prevention and Abatement of Pollution Generated by Mining Wastes - Development of a Decision Support Tool for Minimising the Impact of the Mining Industry on the Environment. The Consortium co-ordinated by BIUTEC, Austria, includes universities, research institutes, NGOs and implementing authorities from 8 European countries, both Members of the EU and accession countries. The experts team is highly qualified and has many years of experience and research in this area, so that the best outputs can be obtained. The project will build on the results of other projects carried out in this field, and will relate closely to on-going projects, so that there is no overlap in our activities. In order to provide an effective tool for the potential beneficiaries, the project team will consult with representatives of the stakeholders before the final versions of the outputs are publicly made available on the project web-site.
Under the 2003 EU Greek presidency, cooperation with Balkan countries on environmental issues was identified as a priority of the EU/Balkan Action Plan. Large-scale co-operation is essential for effective action in the vulnerable Mediterranean and Black Sea coastal zones. During the last 50 years both areas suffered major changes; as semi-enclosed basins, both Seas are ultra-sensitive to anthropogenic stress and to climate change. An EU Presidency Conference on Sustainable Development in the Mediterranean/Black Sea (May 2003), revealed major gaps in management structures, scientific strategies and identified a diversity of environmental issues to be resolved through priority-focused RTD cooperation. Yet, while pressure on the resources of the two seas increases and the potential impact of climate change on coastal and deep-sea resources remains unknown, the two seas have never been jointly studied as systems of interacting basins and ecosystems. The proposal outlines collaboration and clustering schemes involving environmental, economic and scientific organisations in Mediterranean, Black Sea and other EU nations, in order to create synergies in networking and exchanges at several levels, addressing for the first time the system of interconnected basins as one, based on the integration of, both horizontally and vertically, natural scientists and economists. These will: 1) Create an international, interdisciplinary platform coordinating the region's scientific potential in order to prepare RTD projects, based on a Science Plan for the region, securing sustainable development; 2) Focus on natural and anthropogenic pressures exerted upon the functioning of the ecosystem; 3) Reinforce RTD capacity by setting up an environment/resource monitoring network in the light of existing observation networks of different scopes. Prime Contractor: Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Institute of Oceanography, Anavyssos, GR.
Climate change over the next 100 years will likely have a range of direct and indirect effects on the natural and material environment, including the historic built environment. Important changes will include alterations in temperature, precipitation, extreme climatic events, soil conditions, groundwater and sea level. Some processes of building decay will be accelerated or worsened by climate change, while others will be delayed. The impacts on individual processes can be described, but it is difficult to assess the overall risk posed by climate change using currently available data . Linking global changes to the response of material surfaces of archaeological and historic structures remains a challenge. The objectives of the NOAH'S ARK Project are: - To determine the meteorological parameters and changes most critical to the built cultural heritage. - To research, predict and describe the effects of climate change on Europe's built cultural heritage over the next 100 years. - To develop mitigation and adaptation strategies for historic buildings, sites, monuments and materials that are likely to be worst affected by climate change effects and associated disasters. - To disseminate information on climate change effects and the optimum adaptation strategies for adoption by Europe's cultural heritage managers through a conference and guidelines. - To provide electronic information sources and tools, including web-based Climate Risk Maps and a Vulnerability Atlas for heritage managers to assess the threats of climate change in order to visualize the built heritage and cultural landscape under future climate scenarios and model the effects of different adaptation strategies. - To advise policy-makers and legislators through the project's Policy Advisory Panel. The results will allow the prediction of the impact of climate and pollution on cultural heritage and investigation of future climate scenarios on a European scale.
(...) Auf der Basis der Erkenntnis, dass ein hohes Umweltbewusstsein bei großen Verhaltenskosten in der Regel nicht ausreicht, um tatsächlich umweltschonendes Verhalten zu garantieren, stellt die Verringerung der individuellen Kosten für umweltschonendes Verhalten mittlerweile ein wesentliches Ziel von Interventionsmaßnahmen im Umweltbereich dar. Von besonderer Bedeutung ist in diesem Kontext der Kostenfaktor monetärer Preis, da in ihm eine der zentralen Steuerungsvariablen zur Förderung umweltschonenden Verhaltens gesehen wird. Umweltschonendes Verhalten darf also nicht durch höhere Kosten bestraft werden, sondern ist durch gezielte Anreizstrukturen zu fördern. Zusätzlich ist jedoch die Bedeutung von inneren umweltbezogenen Werthaltungen und Einstellungen zu berücksichtigen. Gegenstand des Projekts ist daher die Analyse des Zusammenwirkens von ökologischer Normorientierung und monetären Kosten im Bereich des individuellen Mobilitätsverhaltens. Auf theoretischer und empirischer Ebene existieren hierzu eine Reihe - zum Teil widersprüchlicher - Hypothesen, über die im Rahmen einer quasiexperimentellen Feldstudie eine Entscheidung herbeigeführt werden soll. Als Untersuchungskontext wird das Mobilitätsverhalten von Personen gewählt, da hier ein unmittelbarer Zusammenhang zu globalen Umweltveränderungen (CO2-Anreicherung der Erdatmosphäre) gegeben ist. (...) Im Fokus des aktuellen Projekts steht erneut die Analyse des Wahlverhaltens zwischen Pkw und öffentlichem Personennahverkehr (ÖPNV), wobei die monetären Kosten für die Nutzung von Pkw und ÖPNV in drei Stufen quasi-experimentell variiert werden: (a) ÖPNV-Nutzung teurer als Pkw-Nutzung, (b) ÖPNV-Nutzung und Pkw-Nutzung preisäquivalent, (c) ÖPNV-Nutzung billiger als Pkw-Nutzung. Diese drei-stufige Variation erfolgt hierbei für drei verschiedene Standardstrecken der Upn, und zwar für die drei Zwecke Arbeit/Ausbildung, Einkaufen und Freizeit. Zusätzlich wurde ein Fragebogen entwickelt, in dem neben den bereits im Vorläuferprojekt entwickelten Items zum modifizierten Norm-Aktivations-Modell (neun Subskalen), subjektive Repräsentationen von Preisen (Kostenschätzungen Pkw/ÖV der definierten Standardwege, der subjektiv wahrgenommener eigener finanzieller Spielraum, wahrgenommene Angemessenheit/ Fairness von Preisen und geldspezifische Einstellungen) und Repräsentationen nichtmonetärer Verkehrsmittelattribute (z.B. Komfort, Sicherheit etc.) berücksichtigt werden. (...) In der Auswertung soll überprüft werden, wie monetäre Kosten für räumliche Mobilität subjektiv repräsentiert werden und in welchem Verhältnis subjektive und objektive Kosten stehen. Hier wird erwartet, dass die monetären Kosten für die Pkw-Nutzung im Vergleich zu den Kosten der ÖPNV-Nutzung eher unterschätzt werden. (...) Ein Ziel der Forschungsbemühungen liegt in der Ableitung von Prognosen über die Akzeptanz monetär ausgerichteter Interventionsmaßnahmen zur Förderung umweltschonender Verhaltensweisen.
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