Background: An increasing frequency of massive flooding along the lower Yangtse River in China ended in a disastrous catastrophe in summer 1998 leaving several thousand people homeless, more than 3.600 dead and causing enormous economic damage. Inappropriate land-use techniques and large scale timber felling in the water catchment of the upper Yangtse and its feeder streams were stated to be the main causes. Immediate timber cutting bans were imposed and investigations on land use patterns were initiated by the Chinese Government. The Institute for World Forestry of the Federal Research Centre for Forestry and Forest Products was approached by the Yunnan Academy of Forestry in Kunming to exchange experiences and to cooperate scientifically in the design and application of appropriate afforestation and silvicultural management techniques in the water catchment area of the Yangtse. This cooperation was initiated in 1999 and is based on formal agreements in the fields of agrarian research between the German and Chinese Governments. Objectives: The cooperation was in the first step focussing on the identification of factors which caused the enormous floodings. After their identification measures of prevention were determined and put into practice. In this context experiences made in past centuries in the alpine region of central Europe served as an incentive and example for similar environmental problems and solutions under comparable conditions. Relevant key questions of the cooperation project were: - Analysis of forest related factors influencing the recent floodings of the Yangtse, - Analysis and evaluation of silvicultural management experiences from central Europe for know-how transfer, - Evaluation of rehabilitation measures for successful application in Yunnan, - Dissemination of knowledge through vocational training. Results: - Frequent wild grazing of husbandry is a key factor for forest degeneration beyond unsustainable timber harvests, forest fires and insect calamities leading to increased water run-off in the mountainous region of Yunnan; - Browsing of cattle interrupts succession thus avoiding natural regeneration and leaving a logging ban ineffective; - Mountain pasture in the Alps had similar effects in the past in central Europe. The introduction of controlled grazing has led to an ecologically compatible coexistence of pasture and ecology. Close-to-nature forestry can have positive effects in this sensitive environment. - Afforestation with site adopted broadleaves and coniferous tree species was implemented on demonstration level using advanced techniques in Yunnan.
Advanced optical methods allow to collect air-born information for water quality control. In this project two lakes of former mining areas are used to measure in situ light spectra and absorption features of phytoplankton cells, which define the optical properties of the lakes and reflect the water quality status. These data will be correlated to atmosphere corrected reflectance spectra measured by means of air-born multichannel spectroscopy. The task is to develop mathematical algorithms to extract from air born spectra relevant information which allows water quality assessment.
With this research project we want to contribute to an understanding of the comparative outcomes of alternative property rights institutions for the management of natural resources in developing countries. The key factors and policies affecting the efficiency, environmental sustainability, and equity outcomes and the long-run dynamics of property rights regimes shall be explored. For this purpose an innovative methodology shall be developed which allows to address these issues empirically and to predict the impacts of particular policy measures and changes in external conditions.
Objective: The European commission has recently published the Draft Directive on the Assessment and Management of Environmental Noise. The commission announces, e.g. in article 1 that intelligent, common, harmonised computation methods with ensured accuracy need to be developed. None of the many existing methods in the Member States satisfies these requirements. The HARMONOISE project intends to develop and validate such methods for the Assessment and Management of Noise from Road and Rail Traffic. The project will build on the most recent scientific achievements in all Member States and will also provide consensus amongst future users throughout the EC. For this purpose the Consortium has a wide international and scientific background. The methods to be provided will be implemented as obligatory under the Directive and will thus find a wide use for purposes of noise planning, mapping, zoning, noise abatement measures and strategies and for compliance checks. Objectives: 1. To develop methods by which the sound power output and the directivity of sources of road and rail traffic can be described and assessed as an accurate physical quantity which is independent of short distance sound propagation; 2. To establish a better correlation with future legislation on limiting the noise generation; 3. To define the format of databases by which source dependent data and location dependent data can be collected and stored; 4. To define the minimum set of meteorological conditions which are to be distinguished in order to derive the long term average noise indicator Lden for 3 different periods of the day (day, evening, night) with sufficient accuracy; 5. To apply advanced scientific tools to model and describe the sound propagation under these conditions;6. To validate the models against empirical data of the highest level of definition; 7. To integrate the above steps into one system of methods to be applied by users anywhere in the EC. Work description: Prediction methods for environmental noise from road and rail traffic and from industrial sources are available in various EU member states. These methods show many lacunae: some of them cannot produce the harmonised noise indicator Lden; others show insufficiencies in e.g. the separation of source power output and propagation (usually leading to different propagation models for different sources, which can not be justified from a scientific point of view). Complicated propagation conditions (e.g. multiple reflections in built up areas) show low accuracy. The Harmonoise project will collect the empirical data on which the existing methods were based as well as the models themselves and use these as a starting point for improvement and harmonisation. The source description will be based on true physical quantities (sound power level, directivity), independent of the propagation conditions. Prime Contractor: AEA Technology Rail BV; Utrecht; Nederland.
High and increasing population pressure in the mountainous regions of northern Thailand and Vietnam has resulted in land use practices that induce heavy soil erosion and degradation of soil and water resources. These land use practices are part of a complex farming system where some long-established ethnic groups, like the Black Thai in Vietnam and the Karen in Thailand, combine irrigated rice fields i n the mountain valleys and adjoining terraces with various upland crops under rotational cultivation in the lower parts of the uplands. Other ethnic groups such as the Dao and Hmong in Vietnam and the Lahu, Akha and Hmong in Thailand, who more recently migrated to these areas, cultivate the higher altitudes in a diversified combination of swidden fallow systems and permanent tree crops. Different types of animal husbandry with varying intensity add to the complexity of the farming systems. Some households members may also be engaged in agricultural processing and in off-farm activities. Overlaying this typical structure are large variations according to agro-ecological conditions and economic and institutional settings. This subproject aims at characterising and modelling these farming systems with their interlinkages, representing typical ecological, ethnic, social and institutional / infrastructural situations. On this basis, it will evaluate the economics of labour use in crops and animal production, resource conservation measures and off-farm activities. This will be the basis for analysing in an interdisciplinary approach the competitiveness of fruit tree production (D1) with improved irrigation (B1) and introduced cover crops (C1) in Thailand and resource conservation measures tested in B3 and improved animal production activities (D2), both in Vietnam. Constraints and requirements for making improved agricultural practices economically viable will be identified. This will provide important feedback to these subprojects to possibly extend or modify research direction, particularly for the next phases of the research program. The subproject will have two components, one carrying out the work in the Northern Thailand project region, the other in Northern Vietnam. The villages and farm households to be selected will include in Thailand those, where the subprojects D1, B1 and C1 are located, and in Vietnam those where B3 and D2 are located. The Thailand component can build on previous research work in Northern Thailand carried out by various Thai researchers (funded under the DAAD-PhD and other programs); it will focus on updating and complementing the earlier work. The Vietnam component will focus on the Son La and Bac Kan provinces and in a similar way as in Thailand complement earlier and ongoing research carried out in the Son La province (see A. Luibrand, own research). The subproject intends to use an innovative approach to address the aggregation problem. (abridged text)
The rehabilitation of degraded land and recommendations for a sustainable land use require an understanding of the ecosystem and, in particular, knowledge about vegetation and soil characteristics. The widespread occurrence of degraded barren, i.e. unproductive, land is a severe problem for agricultural development in Southeast Asia. In Vietnam, despite governmental efforts to counteract, the share of the land classified as barren is still increasing and has reached about 40 percent, most of it in hillside areas. Up to now the delineating system for classifying land as barren is based mainly on political stipulation whereas ecological information on vegetation and soils is scarce. Past rehabilitation strategies focussed on reforestation measures only whereas adapted crop or pasture plant species were neglected. In view of the demographic pressure on land resources, it is evident that the rehabilitation of degraded land can contribute significantly to food security and income generation. In particular legumes have the potential to play a major role for sustainable rehabilitation strategies. The present project aims at classifying the plant communities from barren hillsides with different types and levels of degradation, in a region where livestock husbandry plays a role. A further objective is the preliminary assessment of the soil rehabilitation potential of a tropical multiple-purpose legume shrub. On barren hills of the Son La and Bac Kan provinces in Northern Vietnam, vegetation community groups will be assigned, and soil characteristics and land use history analysed at twenty sites with about fifteen micro-sites each. Cluster analyses, principal component analysis and multivariate ordination are used to explore and define relationships among ecological site characteristics and vegetation. The detailed ground analysis in this project leads to a basic framework for further land evaluation that is needed for land rehabilitation and the development of planning strategies for land use. Indigenous knowledge about the use of plant species found in the sampled vegetation will be inquired in a survey among local people. Seeds of potential forage plants will be collected and stored for future evaluation and use. Samples of above-ground material of potential forage plants will be analysed for forage value and, eventually, anti-nutritive components. A first field evaluation of a core collection of Flemingia macrophylla will be conducted on a very degraded barren-hill site in Ba Vi, Ha Tay province, with the objective to describe the species' variability regarding relevant agronomic traits and its potential for soil rehabilitation. The collection consists of 20 genotypes from South China, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, Cameroon, Ghana, and Colombia. (abridged text)
Objectives: In this study we investigate the reactions of fine roots of spruce and poplar to enhanced heavy metal contents in the soil. Soil cores are sampled once or twice a year and the fine roots sieved or sorted out. Parameters which are measured in the fine roots are heavy metal and other element concentrations, protein concentrations, and the activity of the peroxidases. With in-growth cores we intend to measure growth and architecture of newly derived fine roots. Parallel to these investigations, other groups investigate further fine root features using the microscope or the SEM-EDX. Sampled soils are investigated by soil chemists and microbiologists. The birches were inoculated with a specific strain of the ectomycorrhizal fungus Paxillus involutus. We intend together with other groups to investigate their mycorrhizas in order to localise and quantify the heavy metals on a subcellular level using STEM-EDX.
Marginal cost pricing has been identified, both in the (theoretical) economic literature and in various Commission documents, e.g. in the White Paper on Fair payment for infrastructure use (1998), as the pricing regime that maximises efficiency in the transport system and sector. However, examples of its implementation in transport are rare. Even in situations where efficiency is the primary concern, non-price regulatory measures have been far more common while marginal cost pricing is typically viewed as a theoretical concept that is too difficult to put into practice. In practice, in those cases where pricing has been implemented, it has not been marginal cost pricing but its aim has rather been to collect revenue. A starting point of the study is the obvious tension or paradox between the economic theory, which suggests marginal cost pricing is the right solution, and practical experience, which suggests that such pricing measures are hard to implement. In particular, road pricing, which has attained greatest attention in the literature and policy debate, appears to enjoy notably scant support among the population in general and is a controversial topic among politicians and professional policymakers. The reasons for this situation can be manifold: (i) the gap between the underlying economic theory of marginal cost pricing and the requirements for practical implementation may be too large; (ii) important legal and institutional barriers to implementing marginal cost pricing in practice may exist; (iii) concerns of the distributional effects of marginal cost pricing may in practice overshadow considerations of the positive efficiency gains; and (iv) public and political acceptance of marginal cost pricing may be low because of various non-economic factors. This MC-ICAM study is designed to address the issues and questions related to the phased approach to implementation, while having a clear primary focus on intermodal situations. The study will identify and include all significant intermodal competition distortions and related issues affecting the implementation of marginal cost pricing. Naturally, in order to allow for all relevant information and to be able to provide a balanced overall picture (in a situation where modal level distortions may be interlinked with intermodal distortions), the study will also cover intramodal and intersectoral situations.
ESTABLISH is part of the EU-COPERNICUS 2 programme Environment and industry: problems of selected regions and sectors with special focus on sustainable management of natural resources in the coastal areas of the Arctic. ESTABLISH involves 6 partners (Norway (2), Russia (3), Germany (1)) and investigates the bio-geochemical behaviour and fate of heavy metals and radionuclides in the Yenisei estuary, in the Russian/Siberian Arctic. According to recent AMAP studies, the greatest threat to human health and the environment in the Arctic is associated with the potential for nuclear accidents and failures in the containment of the large inventories of radioactive materials in storage, such as high-level liquid and solid wastes. One specific threat stems from the migration of radionuclides from major uncontained sources in the drainage basins of the Ob and Yenisei rivers. Russian studies concluded that many pollutants including heavy metals, enter the Arctic through river input from north-flowing rivers such as the Ob and Yenisei. Most of these pollutants accumulate in river mouths and estuaries before spreading into the Arctic marine basin. The aim of ESTABLISH is to model the biogeochemical behaviour and impact on man of selected heavy metals and radionuclides in the Yenisei Estuary. This will be achieved through the following objectives : (1) to measure contaminant levels in the environment (estuarine waters, sediments, tidally inundated areas and biota) (2) to simulate the transport of aqueous phase and sediment-bound contaminants in the Yenisei Estuary. (3) to identify the biogeochemical reactions at the salt-water/fresh-water interface (4) to determine the long-term fate of contaminants through the study of the spatial distribution of radionuclides and heavy metal in sediment deposits (5) to assess the uptake to biota and the use of these biota by humans for the estuarine aquat ic environment and at the terrestrial land/marine interface in order to assess, at a basic level, the impact of contamination levels on man and the environment. The Institute of Oceanography in Hamburg is, together with the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, St. Petersburg (AARI), responsible for the numerical simulation of transport of dissolved and particulate contaminants in the Kara Sea and the Yenisei Estuary.
With numerical models being increasingly used in management decisions affecting the marine environment, quantification of the variability expected from model results, both between different models and compared to nature, is important. This project sets out a programme of study directed at a quantification of variability for three-dimensional hydrodynamic advection-dispersion models used in European Seas. The specific objectives of the project are: to establish measurements of variability in terms of cost functions; to carry out sensitivity studies on models by defining input functions and measuring the response of the models to controlled variation of these functions; to provide an assessment of the natural spatial and seasonal variability of the marine system; to assess model spatial and seasonal variability against the natural variability; to carry out a detailed assessment of model variability by direct comparison with suitable observations. The cost functions (a.) will provide the measure of variation. The sensitivity studies (b.) will provide a measure of expected model variability. Objectives (c.) and (d.) will provide measures of the actual variability, and (e.) will provide a detailed assessment of the variability. Within the study, the limitations applied will be: salinity and temperature will be the variables assessed in (c.) and (d.), using data spanning at least 10 years; the domain of study will be the southern North Sea (to 56N); one year (1988/89) will be the focus for direct model-data intercomparison, taking advantage of the availability of UK North Sea Project data.
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