Das Projekt "Human ecological dimensions in sustainable utilization and conservation of tropical mountain forests" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Institut für Geographie durchgeführt. Profound knowledge of region-specific human ecological parameters is crucial for the sustainable utilization and conservation of tropical mountain forests in southern Ecuador, a region with heterogenic ethnic, socio-cultural and socio-economic structures. In order to satisfy the objectives of environmental protection on the one hand and the utilization claims of the local population on the other hand, detailed analysis of the following aspects is needed: 1. identification of sustainable land use options, especially regarding the use of non- timber forest products (NTFPs), and local agrobiodiversity;2. investigation of traditional ecological knowledge, especially concerning the perception and evaluation of the natural environment by local ethnic groups; 3. analysis of livelihood strategies of small-scale farming households;4. determination of the political and administrative use agreements including land tenure systems. The ethnoecological approach, which has been applied in previous studies, will be maintained. Further, the research concept will be broadened towards human ecological and political ecological questions respecting livelihood strategies, land use conflicts and land tenure systems.
Das Projekt "Field work and logistics" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Universität Zürich, Institut für Pflanzenbiologie durchgeführt. A wide-ranging field trial as a basis for further projects Wheat is often attacked by mildew, a fungus that impairs both quality and yield. The resistance of wheat to mildew can be enhanced using genetic engineering. A large field trial will be carried out to ascertain how this genetically modified wheat behaves in the natural environment. The emphasis will also be on clarifying aspects of biosafety. Background It is known from laboratory trials that wheat plants can be genetically engineered to make them resistant to fungal attack to a certain degree. However, to date almost no field trials have been carried out in Europe with these fungus-resistant wheat lines. In particular, the way in which genetically modified wheat affects related wild plants, soil organisms and the ecosystem as a whole has not been investigated. Objectives Genetically modified wheat with enhanced resistance to mildew will be cultivated over a three-year period in two locations in Switzerland (Zurich-Reckenholz and Pully near Lausanne). These wheat lines will be investigated in eight separate - but coordinated - projects to ascertain environment-specific benefits and risks. The intention is also to use the field trial for extensive public debate. Methods The field trial will form the basis for individual projects, which will focus mainly on investigating resistance properties, risk assessments and ecological studies. These individual projects will be carried out by an interdiscip- linary research consortium (see under Boller, Felber, Keller, Maurhofer, Nentwig, Romeis, Sautter, Schmid for details of the projects). Special demonstration fields will make the research publicly accessible and will encourage debate. In addition, a website and public events will provide information on how the field trials are progressing and the results of the individual projects. Significance The field trials will enable comprehensive new information to be acquired about the risks and benefits associated with disease-resistant wheat. They will help to clarify whether there is a future for genetically modified plants in Switzerland.
Das Projekt "The mechanisms of ligand adsorption and iron oxide dissolution in the presence of biogenic surfactants" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, Institut für Biogeochemie und Schadstoffdynamik durchgeführt. Many microorganisms and plants produce and release bio-surfactants, for example, in the soil directly surrounding active plant roots (called the rhizosphere). Surfactants are organic compounds with hydrophilic head groups and hydrophobic tails. They generally have a high affinity for mineral surfaces due to electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions. Adsorption of surfactants onto mineral surfaces has pronounced effects on the physico-chemical properties of the mineral-water interface (e.g., surface charge, hydrophobicity). Therefore, we hypothesized that presence of surfactants may have strong effects on a variety of reactions between microorganisms or plant roots exudates and mineral surfaces occurring in soils and other natural environments. One such reaction is the acquisition of the essential nutrient iron by microorganisms or plants through the release of siderophores. Siderophores are organic compounds that strongly bind iron and that promote dissolution of iron bearing minerals by a so called ligand-controlled dissolution mechanism. The specific objective of this work was to study the influence of surfactants on the ligand-controlled dissolution of goethite (a-FeOOH), one of the most common iron oxide minerals in soils and sediments. Two different siderophores and a synthetic ligand (EDTA) were chosen as the complexing ligands. Sodium dodecyl sulfate (synthetic) and rhamnolipids (biogenic) were used as surfactants. Our results revealed that low amounts of adsorbed surfactants significantly increase the ligand-controlled dissolution rates of goethite. The dissolution rates were not proportional to the amount of adsorbed ligands, as stipulated by the rate law of ligand-controlled dissolution. We hypothesized that the enhancement of dissolution rates in the presence of surfactants is related to changing surface speciation of the adsorbed ligand and changes of the surface protonation by proton co-adsorption with the surfactants. Our results suggest that bio-surfactants may play an important role in the iron acquisition by bacteria and roots of certain plant species which release siderophores under iron-limiting conditions.
Das Projekt "PAGES (Past Global Changes International Project)" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von PAGES International Project Office durchgeführt. The PAGES (Past Global Changes) project, including the PAGES International Project Office in Bern, is funded by the Swiss and U.S. National Science Foundations. The current four-year grant runs from 2006-2010. PAGES was founded in 1991 and works to coordinate international paleoscience research, communicate with the paleoscience community, and integrate past global change scientists from around the world into an international network OBJECTIVES AND METHODS: PAGES is a core project of the International Geosphere Biosphere Program (IGBP) and deals with the Earth's climatic and environmental history from the last few 100 years to several 100,000 years. The primary objective of PAGES is to improve our understanding of past climate and environmental change. SCIENTIFIC AREAS OF INTEREST: While PAGES itself is not a research institution, it helps to identify overarching issues in past global change science and ensure that they are addressed in a coherent manner. Four sets of questions of prime current interest will be targeted by PAGES during the coming years: 1. Climate Forcing and Sensitivity: What is the history of the main climate forcing factors (changes in solar irradiation due to changes in the Earth orbit, changes in solar irradiance due to variability in solar activity, variability of greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere, influence of volcanic activity, etc.) and the sensitivity of the climate system to these forcings? In what precise sequence have changes in forcings, surface climate, and ecological systems occurred? 2. Regional Climate Variability: How have global climate and the Earth's natural environment changed in the past? What are the main modes of variability that operated at different timescales, and how do they relate to each other and to the mean state of the climate system? 3. Earth System Dynamics: How have different parts of the Earth System interacted to produce climatic and environmental feedbacks on regional and global scale? What are the causes and thresholds of rapid transitions between quasi-stable climatic and environmental states, in particular on timescales that are relevant to society? How reversible are these changes? 4. Past Human-Climate-Ecosystem Interactions: To what extent and since when has human activity modified climate and the global/regional environment? How can human induced change be disentangled from natural responses to external forcing mechanisms and internal system dynamics? These questions are addressed through organized scientific activities under the umbrella of PAGES. The activities are carried out by the worldwide past global change community, the PAGES Scientific Steering Committee and the PAGES IPO, often in collaboration with other global change programs.
Das Projekt "Integrated Sink Enhancement Assessment" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Universität für Bodenkultur Wien, Institut für Waldbau durchgeführt. 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.
Das Projekt "A GC-MS/GC-IRMS for the molecular-level analyses of organic matter and the isotopic characterization of inorganic and organic compounds in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Universität Basel, Umweltgeowissenschaften durchgeführt. A GC-MS/GC-IRMS for the molecular-level analyses of organic matter and the isotopic characterization of inorganic and organic compounds in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems Stable isotopes represent a valuable means to constrain specific biogeochemical processes in natural environments. The main objective of the project is to develop an Environmental Laboratory for Aquatic and Terrestrial Biogeochemistry, which will support research that will make use of molecular-level characterization and (compound-specific) isotope ratio determination methods to assess a wide spectrum of biogeochemical transformations in the natural environment and in the laboratory, and to study sources and the fate of organic compounds in marine, freshwater, and soil systems. One of the major goals of the projects that make use of the new instrumental capacities is to understand the interactions of the bio- with the geo- and atmosphere with respect to the transport of organic materials and the transformation of inorganic and organic compounds by plants and microorganisms, which is of ultimate importance for the reduction of green house gases and the cycling of elements in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. A prime objective will be to use stable isotope measurements to constrain specific biogeochemical and metabolic processes, as well as sources, transport and degradation of organic matter in aquatic and terrestrial environments, and, in turn, to use these constraints to obtain improved estimates on global and regional C and N fluxes, in modern environments as well as in the past. Planned research themes include: I) using lipid biomarker approaches to study microbial communities in various marine and freshwater environments, II) characterizing organic matter components in lacustrine sediments as well as in soils, and identifying the mechanisms responsible for the longer-term sequestration and degradation of organic C and the emission of greenhouse gases, III) understanding the metabolic pathways of C and N during the symbiosis between microorganisms and plants, and IV) generating data sets for the isotopic composition of nitrate and other N species in various aquatic systems in order to characterize the controls on isotope fractionation of specific N cycle reactions. The spectrum of investigated ecosystems will range from Swiss soil and groundwater systems and small lakes to hydrothermal vent systems in the deep ocean, and the spatial scale of the planned research extends from enzyme biogeochemistry to ocean-scale circulation.
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