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Permafrost Carbon Cycle Observations and Modeling across multiple spatiotemporal scales (PERCCOM)

Permafrost ecosystems in the high Northern latitudes are estimated to store about 1700 Petagram of carbon, which is roughly 50% of the total global belowground carbon, or about double the amount currently contained in the global atmosphere. Future climate projections indicate a strong warming potential for these regions over the next century, which may significantly alter the biogeochemical processes governing the carbon cycle, and thus holds the potential to partly destabilize and release these enormous existing carbon reservoirs. At the same time, the database on carbon exchange fluxes between surface and atmosphere is sparse compared to the size of the region, and significant gaps exist concerning e.g. the coverage of specific landscape units, or observations during the cold season. As a consequence, many processes within the permafrost carbon cycle remain poorly understood, leading to large uncertainties in climate model simulations for this region. To close existing gaps in both flux Arctic flux databases and process understanding, integrated monitoring and modeling tools are required that provide insight into feedback mechanisms between permafrost ecosystems and climate change. This project will establish year-round observation systems in the permafrost region that integrate over multiple spatiotemporal scales to capture carbon flux variability from local to continental levels. The obtained information will be used to identify causal links between environmental drivers and patterns in carbon fluxes based on an integrated framework of atmospheric transport modeling, multivariate statistics, geostatistical inversion and biogeochemical process modeling. The resulting insights into biogeochemical mechanisms will help to improve process representation in modeling frameworks, with the overarching objective to reduce uncertainties in climate projections.

Erneuerbare Funktionsmaterialien - Ausbildung von Materialwissenschaftlern für eine nachhaltige Polymerindustrie (REFINE)

Die Kunststoffindustrie trägt etwa 23% zu den Gesamtverkaufszahlen der Chemischen Industrie in Europa bei, ist jedoch traditionell auf petrochemische Erzeugnisse für ihre Rohstoffe, Zusätze und Reaktionsmedien angewiesen. Im REFINE Projekt sollen nachhaltige Strategien zur Entwicklung von funktionellen Materialien für verschiedenste Polymer/Plastik-Anwendungen entwickelt werden. Im Netzwerk REFINE werden ausnahmslos grüne Rohmaterialien mit grünen Synthesewegen (Biotechnologie) und grünen Prozessen kombiniert. Vervollständigt wird dieser Ansatz durch kritische 'life cycle' Analysen und Endverbraucher Benchmarking, wobei gezielte relevante Anwendungen im industriellen Bereichen mit Polymeren für Coatings sowie mit Körperpflegeprodukten durchgeführt werden. Am Projekt beteiligt sind führende Experten aus den Polymer-, Materialwissenschafts- und Biotechnologiebereichen aus 6 akademischen Forschungseinrichtungen, 2 multinationalen Industrie End-Usern mit verschiedenen Anwendungsgebieten (Performance Polymere und Körperpflegeprodukten) und 1 SME. REFINE wird eine neue Generation von Materialforschern ausbilden, die sich der Auswirkung ihrer Arbeiten auf die Umwelt bewusst sind und die die dabei entwickelten Tools in ihren zukünftigen Arbeitsbereichen anwenden werden (nachhaltige Materialwissenschaftler). Diese einzigartige Kombination aus Wissenschaft, Industrieanwendungen und individuellem Training sowohl in lokalen Bereichen als auch im Netzwerk wird sich positiv auf die Arbeitsplatzsituation in der Bioplastik-Industrie auswirken. Vorhersagen zufolge wird es bis 2020 eine Zunahme von größer als 25% an verfügbaren Arbeitsplätzen in diesem Bereich geben. Die im REFINE Projekt entwickelte grüne Technologie kann direkt in die Industrie integriert werden, was wiederum zu einer grüneren und nachhaltigeren Gesellschaft führen wird.

Environmental Chemoinformatics (ECO)

The implementation of the new EU legislation concerning the registration, evaluation, authorization and restriction of chemicals (REACH) requires demonstration of the safe manufacture of chemicals and their safe use throughout the supply chain. REACH encourages development of new in vitro test methods and replacement of animal tests wherever possible by alternative methods. These goals are not achievable without well-trained personnel with a broad expertise and knowledge in both experimental and computational areas of environmental sciences. The requirements for such scientists, however, are not limited to the REACH implementation itself. Large companies and SMEs could be interested to employ such specialists to perform risk assessment and prioritization of molecules in the development stage. Therefore, the primary objective of this ITN (http://www.eco-itn.eu) is to contribute to the education of a new generation of scientists, environmental chemoinformaticans, who will receive advanced training in both environmental and computational methods. To achieve this goal the ITN will train the fellows using expertise and knowledge of its partners in various complementary computational and experimental areas of environmental sciences. The additional training will also be offered by means of Winter and Summer Schools and will include both theoretical and practical courses. The internships to the laboratories of associated partners will allow fellows to learn new methods and to broaden their knowledge in the field. A flexible system of Short Term Fellowships will offer additional targeted training to researchers originally not associated with the network. Given the potentially great business impact of evaluating more than 120,000 industrial chemicals in the European market within the next decade, the fellows of this network may have a significant economic dimension with regard to the hazard evaluation of chemicals in Europe.

FP7-PEOPLE, Smart cities with sustainable energy systems (CI-NERGY)

The CI-NERGY Marie Curie Initial Training Network (ITN) aims to train young scientists to develop urban decision making and operational optimisation software tools to minimise non-renewable energy use in cities. The training will be carried out by a close collaboration of six of the best academic research centres and four leading industrial companies from the energy and software technology sector (Siemens, WienEnergie, EDF/EIFER, and IES). The research fellows will apply their results in two case study cities (Geneva and Vienna), which were chosen for their very ambitious sustainability goals. The CI-NERGY network will be a highly multi-disciplinary coordinated PhD programme on urban energy sustainability, covering the key challenges in cities related to a low carbon future. There is a gap in high level integrated training in the urban energy research field, which is due to the wide range of fragmented disciplines from building physics and energy supply technologies with electrical and thermal engineering up to software engineering and information technology. The CI-NERGY network wide training provided by excellent academic and industry partners from all areas of smart cities will close this gap. The impact of the network training activities will be highly noticeable for energy supply utilities, IT companies, policy makers, urban planners, researchers on sustainable urban energy systems and finally the inhabitants of cities themselves. All sectors mentioned will provide excellent career opportunities for the research fellows, who will gain excellent knowledge of the sectorial requirements by a structured secondment plan.

Resilience in East African Landscapes: Identifying critical thresholds and sustainable trajectories - past, present and future'

The strong temporal dynamics of the East African landscape and natural-resource distributions have always encouraged people to innovate and adapt to changing conditions. However, increasing population growth, changes in patterns of land tenure, industrialization, weak systems of governance, and global climate change have exacerbated previously localized environmental problems such as soil erosion, depletion of water catchments, loss of forests and grazing land, falling soil fertility and biodiversity. Novel approaches for resolving these challenges are thus urgently needed. Based on the premise that the past is key to understanding the present and planning for the future, this ITN will establish a leading European training network devoted to combining state-of-the-art research methods to tap into under-appreciated knowledge of how indigenous peoples have previously adapted to East Africa's intrinsically unstable climate and land/water resources. By bringing together ecologists, archaeologists, anthropologists, geographers, historians and agronomists the ITN will provide cross-disciplinary training to a new generation of researchers, enabling them to interpret data relating to past and present socio-cultural and ecological dynamics from across the environmental and social sciences and the humanities. Organized by researchers from seven European universities in partnership with Bayer East Africa and U&We, the ITN will co-operate closely with academic counterparts, private-sector stakeholders, NGOs and local communities in East Africa. It will highlight how detailed awareness of the complex history of human-environment interaction in East Africa is central to well-founded and ecologically sustainable resource management, thereby restore the important function of indigenous know-how crucial for devising development policies and climate-risk management for specific areas, and train a new generation of future ecosystem-service managers, policy makers and entrepreneurs.

FP7-PEOPLE, Interdisciplinary Modelling of Climate Change in Coastal Western Antarctica - Network for Staff Exchange and Training (IMCONET)

The proposed European-US and South American network IMet will advance climate and (eco-) system change research at the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), a region of recent rapid aerial warming. WAP glaciers tribute to global sea level rise, and functioning and services of coastal ecosystems are massively threatened by the fast regional warming. Data sets from recent interdisciplinary European-South American field work within ESF-IMCOAST (PolarCLIMATE April 2010-March 2013) and from the Jubany scientific core programme at King George Island (KGI) will be nected and cross-validated with southern stations on WAP: the US Palmer and the British Rothera station. Links with both stations and program leaders (Ducklow, CU, New York, US (formerly at MBL Woods Hole,US); and Meredith, NERC-BAS, Cambridge, UK) have been established in IMCOAST. IMet objectives are A) to develop predictive climate change and ecosystem models for the whole WAP coastal environment based on existing data sets and data exchange policies, B) transfer of knowledge between partner countries to enhance collaboration with high quality long-term measuring programs at all 3 stations, to fill present measuring gaps. This will solidify the basis for the prediction of climate change effects in the South. The proposed sortium sists of 16 institutional partners across 10 countries with 85 travelling scientists. Ten partners already collaborate successfully as EU and associated teams in ESF-IMCOAST, and IMet will be coordinated by the same PI (Abele, AWI). Whereas ESRs are seded mostly for longer training and collaboration periods, exchange of ERs will also foster joint teaching in the partner countries and collaboration in future science projects. The cept of IMet is to strengthen European engagement in Antarctic climate change research, as complementing approach to the major EU focus in the Arctic. It will sustain ongoing European Antarctic research in a future network with competent South American partners.

Die Beziehung zwischen Baum- und Mykorrhizenbiodiversität und der Funktion von Waldökosystemen (LINKTOFUN)

LINKTOFUN (Linking tree and belowground biodiversity to forest Ecosystem function) beschäftigt sich mit der Beziehung zwischen Baum- und Mykorrhizenbiodiversität und der Funktion und Stabilität von Waldökosystemen. Ein besonderer Schwerpunkt ist die Verbindung zwischen Biodiversität und der Kohlenstoffdynamik und -Speicherung im Boden. Untersuchungen sollen in Naturreservaten, auf einer neugegründeten Baumbiodiversitätsversuchsfläche in Tulln sowie in Mesokosmen durchgeführt werden. Das Projekt liefert einen wichtigen Beitrag zum Verständnis von dem Zusammenhang zwischen Biodiversität und Ökosystemleistungen von Wäldern.

Entscheidungsunterstützung für eine adaptive forstliche Bewirtschaftung zur Erbringung von Ökosystemdienstleistungen in Europa

Es besteht ein dringender Bedarf an Entscheidungsunterstützung für Waldbewirtschafter die mit den Herausforderungen einer grenzüberschreitenden Waldbewirtschaftung konfrontiert sind. Das Projekt wird neue analytische Ansätze zur strukturierten Entscheidungsfindung analysieren, um Entscheidungsträger beim Erhalt der Biodiversität und der Erfüllung von Ökosystemdienstleistungen unter Klimawandel und begrenzten Ressourcen in Europa zu informieren. Das Projekt wird die Unterschiede europäischer Länder bei der Umsetzung von paneuropäischer Politik in Bezug auf die Waldbewirtschaftung auf der Basis einer Literaturrecherche zeigen. Bestehende Entscheidungsunterstützungssysteme (Decision-Support- Tools) zur Anpassung forstlicher Maßnahmen über politische Grenzen hinweg sollen kritisch analysiert werden. Die Analyse wird die Grundlagen für Workshops mit Entscheidungsträgern von ausgewählten grenzüberschreitenden Nationalparks liefern. Damit sollen Rahmenbedingungen und wichtige Leitlinien für eine räumliche Optimierung der Anpassungsmaßnahmen über Grenzen hinweg erarbeitet werden. Eine interaktive webbasierte Entscheidungshilfe soll die Planung und Entscheidungsfindung im Rahmen der Waldbewirtschaftung unter unterschiedlichen Klima- und Managementszenarien unterstützen. Die Projektergebnisse werden dazu dienen, das Wissen um die Bedeutung und Aufrechterhaltung von Ökosystem-Dienstleistungen über Grenzen hinweg in Europa zu verbessern.

Reinforced Vegetation Numerical Evaluation of Slopes (REVENUES)

Vegetation acts as a reinforcement for slopes due to the penetration of roots into the ground. Roots penetration is a time dependent phenomenon that is strongly connected to the hydro-geological condition of the slope and interacts with soil properties. Roots reinforcement of soil is well documented and numerous formulae exist in literature. The reinforcement action is provided by roots penetrating below a potential slip surface and stiffening the slope. Roots contribution to stability depends both on mechanical (roots tensile strength and on roots pull-out resistance) and hydraulic effects. Both aspects have already been investigated and some models and formulae already exist which enable a qualitative evaluation of such contribution. Anyway no sophisticated software exists for the prediction of the three-dimensional numerical analysis of slope stabilized with vegetation. Existing software provides simple limit equilibrium analyses and is limited to plane problems. This research project joins together scientific expertise and numerical know-how to implement latest advances in slope reinforcement with vegetation into commercial codes. The resulting software will enable three-dimensional reinforced slope modeling. It will provide realistic soil-root interaction and root constitutive models. It will take into account roots growth with time and it will consider variations of the watertable and unsaturated conditions.

Research and Competence Training Network for Sustainability-Driven Innovation (I4S)

I4S is a project funded by the European Union in support of its strategic commitment to smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. Under the leadership of The Academy of Business in Society (EABIS), eight leading universities and their corporate partners collaborate to study sustainability-driven innovation (SDI) - which is understood as innovation not only directed at economic gains but also at positive ecological and social effects. Preliminary research and prospective studies suggest that SDI involves management competences and organisational capabilities rarely found in traditional business-led, technology-driven innovation. The projects primary aim is thus to research how companies manage the transformation of business processes and business models related to SDI as a multi-actor process. These management practices will be studied by individual researchers embedded with associated partners engaged in SDI. The I4S project is funded by the EUs 7th Framework Programme (subject to awarding of the EU) under the Marie Curie Action: Initial Training Networks scheme aimed at both increasing attractiveness of research careers for early stage researchers and adding to their employability through exposure to both academia and enterprises. The research program is accompanied by network training events and site visits at various partner locations during the whole project, allowing to develop more generic knowledge about the barriers and obstacles to innovation across sectors.

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