The geomagnetic field shields our habitat against solar wind and radiation from space. Due to the geometry of the field, the shielding in general is weakest at high latitudes. It is also anomalously weak in a region around the south Atlantic known as South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA), and the global dipole moment has been decreasing by nearly 10 percent since direct measurements of field intensity became possible in 1832. Due to our limited understanding of the geodynamo processes in Earths core, it is impossible to reliably predict the future evolution of both dipole moment and SAA over the coming decades. However, lack of magnetic field shielding as would be a consequence of further weakening of dipole moment and SAA region field intensity would cause increasing problems for modern technology, in particular satellites, which are vulnerable to radiation damage. A better understanding of the underlying processes is required to estimate the future development of magnetic field characteristics. The study of the past evolution of such characteristics based on historical, archeo- and paleomagnetic data, on time-scales of centuries to millennia, is essential to detect any recurrences and periodicities and provide new insights in dynamo processes in comparison to or in combination with numerical dynamo simulations. We propose to develop two new global spherical harmonic geomagnetic field models, spanning 1 and 10 kyrs, respectively, and designed in particular to study how long the uninterrupted decay of the dipole moment has been going on prior to 1832, and if the SAA is a recurring structure of the field.We will combine for the first time all available historical and archeomagnetic data, both directions and intensities, in a spherical harmonic model spanning the past 1000 years. Existing modelling methods will be adapted accordingly, and existing data bases will be complemented with newly published data. We will further acquire some new archeomagnetic data from the Cape Verde islands from historical times to better constrain the early evolution of the present-day SAA. In order to study the long-term field evolution and possible recurrences of similar weak field structures in this region, we will produce new paleomagnetic records from available marine sediment cores off the coasts of West Africa, Brazil and Chile. This region is weakly constrained in previous millennial scale models. Apart from our main aim to gain better insights into the previous evolution of dipole moment and SAA, the models will be used to study relations between dipole and non-dipole field contributions, hemispheric symmetries and large-scale flux patterns at the core-mantle boundary. These observational findings will provide new insights into geodynamo processes when compared with numerical dynamo simulation results.Moreover, the models can be used to estimate past geomagnetic shielding above Earths surface against solar wind and for nuclide production from galactic cosmic rays.
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.
Wie die HELCOM-Expertengruppe für Meeressäugetiere (EG MAMA; portal.helcom.fi, 2021) feststellt, liegen nur begrenzte Informationen über das Vorkommen, die (Öko-)Toxizität und die potenziellen gesundheitlichen Auswirkungen von Neuen Schadstoffen bei Meeressäugern vor. Neue Schadstoffe werden durch verschiedene anthropogene Aktivitäten in die Umwelt eingebracht, und einige dieser Stoffe haben das Potenzial, in Meeres-, Süßwasser- und/oder terrestrische Nahrungsnetze zu gelangen, wo sie sich anreichern können. Gegenwärtig fehlen häufig Informationen über die Exposition, und es besteht ein dringender Bedarf an ausreichenden Daten zum Vorkommen und die Auswirkungen, um CEC bewerten und gegebenenfalls Maßnahmen zur Risikominderung einleiten zu können. Ziel des Projekts war das Screening auf potenziell gefährliche Neue Schadstoffe in Meeressäugetieren aus der Ostsee unter Verwendung modernster analytischer Methoden für ein weitreichendes Ziel- und Verdachtsscreening. Zu diesem Zweck wurden 11 gepoolte Leber- und eine nicht gepoolte Muskelprobe von 11 Meeressäugern (Schweinswal (Phocoena phocoena), Gewöhnlicher Delphin (Delphinus delphis), Kegelrobbe (Halichoerus grypus), Seehund (Phoca vitulina)) von HELCOM-Vertragsparteien aus Deutschland, Schweden, Dänemark und Polen zur Verfügung gestellt. Die interessierenden Verunreinigungen wurden aus den gefriergetrockneten Matrizes mit Hilfe allgemeiner Extraktionsmethoden extrahiert, und die endgültigen Extrakte wurden sowohl mit Flüssig- als auch mit Gaschromatographie in Verbindung mit hochauflösender Massenspektrometrie (HRMS; LC-ESI-QToF und GC-APCI-QToF) analysiert. Die Proben wurden quantitativ auf das Vorhandensein von mehr als 2,500 organischen Schadstoffen untersucht, darunter Verbindungen verschiedener Klassen wie Arzneimittel, Kosmetika, Biozide, Pflanzenschutzmittel, illegale Drogen, Stimulanzien, Süßstoffe und Industriechemikalien (z. B. Per- und Polyfluoralkylsubstanzen (PFAS), Flammschutzmittel, Korrosionsinhibitoren, Weichmacher, Tenside) sowie deren Umwandlungsprodukte (TPs). Darüber hinaus wurde eine Methode zur Analyse von 23 Verbindungen entwickelt, die in Sprengstoffen enthalten sind, die in der Vergangenheit in die Ostsee verklappt wurden, wobei ein anderes Verfahren zur Probenvorbereitung verwendet wurde. Eine spezifische Ziel-Screeningmethode, die dieselbe Probenvorbereitung verwendet, wurde auch für 13 neue phosphororganische Flammschutzmittel (OPFR) und zwei Dechloran-plus-Verbindungen angewandt.Das Verdachtsscreening von 65.690 umweltrelevanten Substanzen aus der NORMAN-Stoffdatenbank wurde an allen HRMSRohchromatogrammen durchgeführt. Die Chromatogramme wurden auch in die NORMAN Digital Sample Freezing Platform (DSFP) hochgeladen und stehen somit für das retrospektive Screening von noch mehr Verbindungen zur Verfügung, sobald die Informationen für deren Screening verfügbar sind...
The Antarctic irwertebrate fauna appears highiy diverse, but is only localiy and sporadically explored - and already threatened by global climate change. Gastropods are abundant, species rieh, ecologically and economically irnportant, count with a rieh fossil record and are wellestablished äs model organisms for many scientific disciplines. Most of the roughly 600 Antarctic gastropod species are regarded valid at the mornent based on shell features of often just a few or single specimens. Intraspecific morphological variability, soft pari anatomy, biology' and ecology are usually unknown, and many synonyms have been proposed. Wolecular data are limited to CÖI barcode sequences of few individuals of the more common species: Phylogenetic analyses of single genes suggest complexes of cryptic species or deep lineages, which may show distinct geographic distributions and special ecological niches. Rarity of species or samples prohibits general population genetics approaches. The prirnary goal of our herein proposed project is revealing the species diversity of Antarctic gastropods comprehensively and reliably. In addition to mltochondrial CÖI, we will use next generation sequencing (NGS) and newly established methods (double digest Restriction Associated DMA sequencing, ddRADseq) to efficiently generate a multitude of independent nuclear genomic sequence markers. We will include all species and subsamples from rnore than 2000 Southern Öcean gastropod samples available at the ZSM Mollusca collection suitable for genetic studies, plus further material to be collected at expeditions or from other museums. We will perform phylogenetic analyses (ML, Bayes, in subgroups BEST) and combined, up to-date molecular species delimitation approaches (ABGD, GMYCS BP&P), An integrative taxonomic approach reiying on congruence will be applied to revea! conservative and reliable evolutionary species units, which will be used for diversity analyses, We will also explore genomic evolutionary archives of seiected gastropod lineages performing fossil-calibrated BEAST chronograms. The dynamics of diversification will be analyzed via recent Birth-Death-Shift models, and historical biogeography will be reconstructed using recent Software (e.g, RASP). With our massif genomic data from many subtaxa we will test current paradigms on biogeography and evolution, such äs glacial cycles causing an 'Antarctic speciation pump', and evaluate competing hypotheses on glacial refuges and migration scenarios. The herein proposed combination of ddRADseqs with up to date multi-iocus analyses is novel, extremely cost and time effective, and can include thousands instead of few specimens' without any a priori selectron. It is expected to be very powerful to delimitate newty collected, unrecognized, or cryptic species, even jf badly sampled or just represented by singletons...
The understanding of long-term, natural climate variability on different spatial and temporal scales is crucial to assess the recent climate change in a global to regional context. Since glaciers are considered as very important climate indicators, the understanding of past and present glacier variations is a key task for evaluating current climate change. Alpine and Scandinavian glaciers do react differently on variations of energy balance, temperature, precipitation and atmospheric circulation. This project investigates the importance of regional/continental temperature and precipitation as driving factors for glacier dynamics (retreats, advances) during the period from the Little Ice Age (LIA) to the early 21st century. Historical information from different archives will allow the reconstructions of glacier length fluctuations and mass balances from (western) Scandinavian glaciers and of a transect from western to the eastern Alps. Further, the sensitivity of Alpine and Scandinavian glaciers to variations of temperature and precipitation, including glacier advances and retreats covering half a millennium, will be studied by means of (non-linear) statistical approaches. A complementary method by reconstruction of mass balances using a continuity approach combined with a GIS-based energy balance model and gridded climate data will also be applied. Finally, the mass balances are extrapolated for the entire Alps and Scandinavia using a distributed energy balance model. This enables a synoptical analysis of European climate related to its significance for glacier fluctuations for the last half millennium. Moreover, the project will shed some light on the future glacier behaviour within the different mountain ranges of Scandinavia and the Alps using existing distributed mass balance and ELA models using different scenarios on the increase of temperature and the change of precipitation. We will also address the question of a changing perception of the glaciers in the Alps and Scandinavia for the last few centuries. The fear of threat by glaciers in early times has changed today to a fear of loss of glaciers as beautiful landscape by the current rapid change of climate. The long-term glacier length record for the Alps and Scandinavia will be stored in the existing database of the Global Terrestrial Network on Glaciers (GTN-G) as part of the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS). A close cooperation between the Universities in Bern/Zurich and Bergen, Norway, will ensure a mutual enrichment of the scientific research. The project is coupled with a joint proposal submitted by the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research in Bergen. Both projects base on a mutual collaboration of data and knowledge exchange. Finally, to inform the public about the consequences of the current glacier change is crucial, and glaciers are excellent indicators for the public perception of climate change in mountainous areas.
The project will use analysis of long-term data, resurrection ecology and modeling to investigate the ecological and evolutionary response of an aquatic key herbivore, Daphnia, to environmental change. In addition, the results obtained will enable to estimate the consequences of the evolutionary response of Daphnia for its population dynamics, persistence and consequently, overall ecosystem dynamics. The project will analyze in detail the response of Daphnia, its food, competitors and predators to oligo-trophication in a model ecosystem, i.e., Lake Constance and additionally variability in Daphnia population dynamics in several of the best studied lakes of the world. Historical field samples from Lake Constance will be re-analyzed to study the phenotypic life history and morphological responses of Daphnia to oligo-trophication. Using resurrection ecology we will analyze the evolutionary response of Daphnia galeata life history parameters to oligo-trophication - with special emphasis on its investment into sexual reproduction/production of resting eggs as well as life history plasticity in response to invertebrate predators and declining food levels. These analyses (in combination with model simulations) will provide key data for understanding the role of Daphnia life cycle strategy (overwintering in the plankton or in resting eggs) for Daphnia persistence in permanent lakes, for the interpretation of Daphnia resting egg banks, and the evolution of the genetic variances and co-variances of life history parameters.
SOCIOEC is an interdisciplinary, European wide project bringing together scientists from several fisheries sciences with industry partners and other key stakeholders to work in an integrated manner on solutions for future fisheries management, that can be implemented at a regional level. The central concept is to provide a mechanism for developing measures that are consistent with the overarching sustainability objectives of the EU, and that can provide consensus across all stakeholders. The first step will be to develop a coherent and consistent set of management objectives, which will address ecological; economic and social sustainability targets. The objectives should be consistent with the aims of the CFP, MSFD and other EU directives, but they should also be understandable by the wider stakeholder community and engage their support. This will then lead to the proposal of a number of potential management measures, based on existing or new approaches. The second step will be to analyze the incentives for compliance provided by these measures. In particular, we will examine fisher's responses and perceptions of these measures, based on historical analysis as well as direct consultation and interviews. This project part will also examine how the governance can be changed to facilitate self- and co-management to ensure fisher buy-in to promising management measures. In particular, the project will focus on the interpretation of overarching (i.e. EU) objectives in local and regional contexts. Finally, the project will examine the impacts of the management measures that emerge from this process, particularly in terms of their economic and social impacts. The IA analysis will be integrated by evaluating the proposed measures against the criteria of effectiveness, efficiency and coherence. Special attention will be paid in evaluating the proposed management measures' performance in terms of their ability to achieve the general and specific ecological objectives.
Birds and bats deliver crucial ecosystem services, i.e. seed dispersal and predation on arthropods. As they are rarely considered together in ecosystem studies linking biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, we will test 1. for functional redundancy within and among the two groups, 2. differential reactions towards altitude and land use, and 3. potential influence of climate change and further intensification of land use on composition and functionality. Bird and bat assemblages will be assessed by sampling at the same sites along an elevational and land use gradient. The functional role of birds and bats as seed dispersers will be assessed by feeding experiments and measuring seed rain. Exclosure experiments will be conducted jointly (SP 7) to determine their role as predators of arthropods. Path analysis will be used to quantify relationships between climatic factors (SP 1-3), habitat structure (SP 4, 5), food availability (SP 7, 8), structure of bird and bat assemblages and associated ecosystem services. The path coefficients can be applied to predict changes based on various scenarios of climate and land use change. We will also analyse temporal changes in forest bird communities in relation to climate and land use change using historical monitoring data.
Mountain regions provide goods and services for much of humanity. Twelve percent of the world's population lives in mountain regions and half of humanity depends on resources arising in mountain regions. Outside of the tropics, mountain regions provide 40Prozent of all the freshwater, and in arid and semi-arid regions, this fraction approaches 70-100Prozent. Mountains contain one quarter of Earth's terrestrial biodiversity and one half of the planet's biodiversity hot spots. Mountain forests and soils are among the major terrestrial carbon pools. Mountain ecosystems are very sensitive to drivers of change, from climate change to the loss of vegetation and soils due to inappropriate management practices and extractive industries. The future ability of mountain regions to provide their many goods and services to highland and lowland residents is seriously threatened by climatic changes, environmental pollution, unsustainable management of natural resources and serious gaps in understanding of mountain systems. Both fundamental research activities and transdisciplinary efforts are required to achieve sustainable use of mountain regions. While a number of regional or disciplinary programs exist, the global mountain research community has historically operated at a sub-optimal level due to insufficient communication across geographic and linguistic barriers, less than desirable coordination of research frameworks, and a lack of funding. The Mountain Research Initiative (MRI) was created to overcome these constraints by (1) framing research approaches within an interdisciplinary integrative framework; (2) improving communication to overcome the isolation of researchers separated by distance, language and discipline; and (3) influencing funding for global change research in mountain regions. The MRI supports the science needed to adapt successfully to global change by building on its successes to frame the research agenda, implement that agenda at a global and regional levels, integrate research results, provide key information services, improve communications and advocate for funding of global change research in mountains. With the support of several Swiss funding agencies, a small MRI Project Office was established in Bern in July 2001. It was funded at a more significant level by SNF in 2004. To conserve its limited resources, the MRI moved its main office to ETH Zürich in 2005 and also opened a small, free office at the University of Lausanne in order to reinforce contacts in French-speaking Switzerland. In 2007 MRI will move its main office to the University of Bern. Products will include articles in peer-reviewed journals, a scientifically focused Newsletter, an enhanced website, an expanded database of researchers and research programs, and innovative use of webcast and internet based communications.
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