Fraunhofer-Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability LBF and the Fraunhofer-Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST jointly coordinates a Support and Coordinated Action aiming at defining and harmonising a commonly accepted and applied single Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach for zero-emission vehicles ZEV. 44 key stakeholders along the full value chain of zero-emission vehicles covering, among others, vehicle and battery manufactures, the supply industry, energy providers and recyclers are working together. The European Commission supports the unique initiative…

Insect numbers have been declining over the past decades in many parts of the world. Protected areas could safeguard threatened insects, but a team of researchers led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), the Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the University of Queensland now found that 76% of globally assessed insect species are not adequately covered by protected areas worldwide. In the journal One Earth, the researchers encourage decision-makers to…

Federal Minister Cem Özdemir hands over funding notification at the IGW. New “farm of the future” in the Alte Land – Start of the research project “Smart automation systems and services for fruit growing in the Lower Elbe region” (“SAMSON”) funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL). As part of the awarding of the “Digital Future Farms and Future Regions for Sustainable Agriculture” funding notification at the International Green Week (IGW) in Berlin, Germany, the Federal…

A new Horizon Europe project led by IIASA, called Urban ReLeaf, leverages citizen science for public sector innovation. Urban ReLeaf aims to co-create citizen-powered data ecosystems to support climate change adaptation, green infrastructure, and urban design planning. The project, coordinated by Inian Moorthy and Gerid Hager from the IIASA Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability (NODES) Research Group, is a collaboration between academic and private sector partners as well as six cities: Athens, Greece; Cascais, Portugal; Dundee, UK; Mannheim, Germany; Riga,…

Europe lacks groundwater – a lot of groundwater. The continent has already been suffering from a severe drought since 2018. This is confirmed by satellite data analysed at the Institute of Geodesy at TU Graz. Europe has been experiencing a severe drought for years. Across the continent, groundwater levels have been consistently low since 2018, even if extreme weather events with flooding temporarily give a different picture. The beginning of this tense situation is documented in a publication by Eva…

Synthesis of fumaric acid by a new method of artificial photosynthesis, using sunlight. In recent years, environmental problems caused by global warming have become more apparent due to greenhouse gases such as CO2. In natural photosynthesis, CO2 is not reduced directly, but is bound to organic compounds which are converted to glucose or starch. Mimicking this, artificial photosynthesis could reduce CO2 by combining it into organic compounds to be used as raw materials, which can be converted into durable forms…

Increase in disease severity has implications for fish farms, marine life, human health. Microplastics—tiny particles generated as plastics weather and fragment—pose a growing threat to ecosystem and human health. A new laboratory study shows these threats extend beyond direct physical or chemical impacts, revealing that the presence of microplastics increases the severity of an important viral fish disease. Lead author on the study, published in Science of the Total Environment, is Dr. Meredith Evans Seeley, who conducted the research as part…

Researchers at Göttingen University investigate attractiveness of wheat-bean crop mixtures for pollinating insects. There are often too few flowering plants in agricultural landscapes, which is one reason for the decline of pollinating insects. Researchers at the University of Göttingen have now investigated how a mixture of crops of faba beans (broad beans) and wheat affects the number of pollinating insects. They found that areas of mixed crops compared with areas of single crops are visited equally often by foraging bees….

Mapping trees, finding heat islands: Research drones offer many new options for small-scale observation of the environment. Earth observation, also known as remote sensing, provides highly relevant information about the state and change of our planet every day via satellite data worldwide. The data can be used, for example, to gather information about heat islands in cities, droughts or the condition of forests. Earth observation is currently opening up additional data sources: With sensors installed on commercially available drones, it…

Environmental DNA analysis of microbial communities can help us understand how a particular region’s water cycle works. Basel hydrogeologist Oliver Schilling recently used this method to examine the water cycle on Mount Fuji. His results have implications for other regions worldwide. Where does the water come from that provides drinking water to people in a particular region? What feeds these sources and how long does it take for groundwater to make its way back up to the surface? This hydrological…

Long-term measurements in the urban area of Innsbruck, Austria, show that the fraction of ozone near the surface tends to be overestimated in atmospheric models. Consequently, a fundamental assumption for air quality forecasting has to be reinterpreted for urban areas. Measurements by an international team led by atmospheric scientist Thomas Karl of the University of Innsbruck also show that direct nitrogen dioxide emissions are overestimated. The 40-meter-high monitoring tower of the Innsbruck Atmospheric Observatory near the city center of Innsbruck…

At high elevations of the Greenland Ice Sheet, the years 2001 to 2011 were 1.5 °C warmer than in the 20th century and represent the warmest decade in the last thousand years. A temperature reconstruction from ice cores of the past 1,000 years reveals that today’s warming in central-north Greenland is surprisingly pronounced. The most recent decade surveyed in a study, the years 2001 to 2011, was the warmest in the past 1,000 years, and the region is now 1.5…

New testing technologies to support global effort to reduce health risks to people, wildlife. New research from the University of Nevada, Reno, is expected to play an important role in the global battle against airborne mercury pollution, a serious health threat to people and wildlife alike. The researchers have verified that new technologies, including some developed at the University, measure airborne mercury pollution far more accurately than the older systems that have been in widespread use for decades. In fact,…

The water-filtering abilities of farmed kelp could help reduce marine pollution in coastal areas, according to a new University of Alaska Fairbanks-led study. The paper, published in the January issue of Aquaculture Journal, analyzed carbon and nitrogen levels at two mixed-species kelp farms in southcentral and southeast Alaska during the 2020-21 growing season. Tissue and seawater samples showed that seaweed species may have different capabilities to remove nutrients from their surroundings. “Some seaweeds are literally like sponges — they suck…

Ecologists are increasingly using traces of genetic material left behind by living organisms left behind in the environment, called environmental DNA (eDNA), to catalogue and monitor biodiversity. Based on these DNA traces, researchers can determine which species are present in a certain area. Obtaining samples from water or soil is easy, but other habitats – such as the forest canopy – are difficult for researchers to access. As a result, many species remain untracked in poorly explored areas. Researchers at…

UV light from the sun slowly breaks down plastics on the ocean’s surfaces. Floating microplastic is broken down into ever smaller, invisible nanoplastic particles that spread across the entire water column, but also to compounds that can then be completely broken down by bacteria. This is shown by experiments in the laboratory of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, NIOZ, on Texel. In the latest issue of Marine Pollution Bulletin, PhD student Annalisa Delre and colleagues calculate that about…