Jorge Gomez-Paredes. PhD and Prof. Ramona Teuber have successfully received DAAD funding to establish a virtual academic collaboration between the Universities of Sydney and Giessen, which will enable intercultural and academic exchange between faculty and students from Germany and Australia in the academic field of sustainable development.

Further details

The project "Fork-to-farm agent-based simulation tool augmenting BIOdiversity in the agri-food VALUE chain" (BIOVALUE), in which ZEU is also involved with a working group led by Elena Xoplaki, was selected by the EU as Project of the Month.

This is also due to the fact that BIOVALUE has joined forces with other like-minded projects to promote the benefits of biodiversity in agriculture and to develop solutions to incorporate it more effectively into agricultural practices and policies. This project cluster will be launched soon, thus pooling the objectives more effectively.

Great success for Dr. Suzanne Jacobs and Dr. Björn Weeser from the Justus Liebig University (JLU) Giessen. The Kurt-Eberhard-Bode Foundation awarded the research team with funding of 479,900 Euro in order to establish the junior research group “HydroCrowd - Citizen Science in Hydrology”. The funds will be used to develop innovative strategies for the monitoring of water resources in Tanzania, Ecuador, and Honduras over the next three years.

The team from the Center for International Development and Environmental Research (ZEU) at JLU Giessen was able to convince the foundation with their project proposal in the framework of the "Water - Sustainable Resource Usage" program. The aim of the project is to gather data on water quantity and quality in the East African and Latin American countries. The novelty: citizens will be involved in the research, as the name of the project already suggests. Why is this necessary when numerous methods for automatic water monitoring already exist? "Such automatic systems are expensive, and many countries do not have the infrastructure to support them", says Dr. Suzanne Jacobs. "We therefore aim to identify and develop methods which are inexpensive and can easily be used by the citizens without requiring specialized training."

During the project, measuring stations will be installed close to rivers. A sign next to the station will explain how it works, allowing people of all ages to participate. Measured parameters include rainfall as well as the air temperature and relative humidity. These data can later be used to calculate evaporation, which is a key component of the water balance. In the river, citizens will be able to measure the water level and turbidity. While the water level will be used to determine the discharge, turbidity serves as an indicator of water quality, since water from the river is directly used for consumption in many countries. The citizen scientists, both members of the local community and tourists, will submit their measurements using smartphones.

The research team also aims to examine the motivation of the citizen scientists to better understand why people participate in such projects. These findings can be used to develop more effective citizen science projects in the future. The data collected by the citizens will be used to set up hydrological models that can support sustainable water resource management. In order to gain a broader perspective, the team will combine the measurements with satellite data and apply artificial intelligence methods. The models will also consider water usage conflicts, since water is not just used for drinking, but also for irrigation, industry, and power generation.

"Access to water has been recognized as a human right and is one of the Sustainable Development Goals in the Agenda 2030 of the United Nations”, explains Dr. Björn Weeser as he emphasizes the relevance of the research project. "Meanwhile, we observe a decrease in the number of hydroclimatic monitoring stations around the world. By involving the general public in data collection, the number of measurements can be increased; and this is what we aim at."

• ZEU project website

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Martin Petrick and Prof. Ramona Teuber were able to acquire a new project for ZEU from the Volkswagen Foundation. This study complements the project "Sustainable Agricultural Development in Central Asia (SUSADICA)" and is designed to achieve the following objectives:

1. to analyze current consumption patterns of rural and urban households in Afghanistan and based on this to measure the extent and severity of food insecurity,
2. to investigate the coping strategies of households in rural and urban contexts, and their implications for increasing food security in the country; and
3. to analyze the main determinants of food insecurity in rural and urban areas, and provide suitable policy recommendations for addressing food insecurity in those areas.

The project is carried out by Dr. Najibullah Hassanzoy. 

The DGO Congress for Central and East European Studies - 2022 takes place in Berlin, October 6-7.

Dr. Vladimir Otrachshenko coorganizes the section "Economy" entitled "Environment and Economic Development in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. This section is devoted to challenges faced by the region on its way to sustainable development and economic policy measures targeted at mitigating them. It is open to the general public. For a detailed program and registration please check here.

Great success for Dr. Suzanne Jacobs and Dr. Björn Weeser from the Justus Liebig University (JLU) Giessen. The Kurt-Eberhard-Bode Foundation awarded the research team with funding of 479,900 Euro in order to establish the junior research group “HydroCrowd - Citizen Science in Hydrology”. The funds will be used to develop innovative strategies for the monitoring of water resources in Tanzania, Ecuador, and Honduras over the next three years.

The team from the Center for International Development and Environmental Research (ZEU) at JLU Giessen was able to convince the foundation with their project proposal in the framework of the "Water - Sustainable Resource Usage" program. The aim of the project is to gather data on water quantity and quality in the East African and Latin American countries. The novelty: citizens will be involved in the research, as the name of the project already suggests. Why is this necessary when numerous methods for automatic water monitoring already exist? "Such automatic systems are expensive, and many countries do not have the infrastructure to support them", says Dr. Suzanne Jacobs. "We therefore aim to identify and develop methods which are inexpensive and can easily be used by the citizens without requiring specialized training."

During the project, measuring stations will be installed close to rivers. A sign next to the station will explain how it works, allowing people of all ages to participate. Measured parameters include rainfall as well as the air temperature and relative humidity. These data can later be used to calculate evaporation, which is a key component of the water balance. In the river, citizens will be able to measure the water level and turbidity. While the water level will be used to determine the discharge, turbidity serves as an indicator of water quality, since water from the river is directly used for consumption in many countries. The citizen scientists, both members of the local community and tourists, will submit their measurements using smartphones.

The research team also aims to examine the motivation of the citizen scientists to better understand why people participate in such projects. These findings can be used to develop more effective citizen science projects in the future. The data collected by the citizens will be used to set up hydrological models that can support sustainable water resource management. In order to gain a broader perspective, the team will combine the measurements with satellite data and apply artificial intelligence methods. The models will also consider water usage conflicts, since water is not just used for drinking, but also for irrigation, industry, and power generation.

"Access to water has been recognized as a human right and is one of the Sustainable Development Goals in the Agenda 2030 of the United Nations”, explains Dr. Björn Weeser as he emphasizes the relevance of the research project. "Meanwhile, we observe a decrease in the number of hydroclimatic monitoring stations around the world. By involving the general public in data collection, the number of measurements can be increased; and this is what we aim at."

Citizens inspect a water level gauge in Kenya together with the research team Dr. Jacobs and Dr. Weeser to determine the water level
Foto: Fabia Codalli

About the Kurt-Eberhard-Bode Fundation im Stifterverband

Founded in 1987 by Hamburger entrepreneur Eberhard Bode, the Foundation funds interdisciplinary research in the life sciences, natural sciences, as well as bioinformatics and informatics. The "Water - Sustainable Resource Usage" program was first announced in 2012. Calls are published every three years. Through its program, the Kurt-Eberhard-Bode-Stiftung aims to foster interdisciplinary, applied research concepts among young scientists, resulting in innovative strategies and concepts at the intersection of science and society.

Contact

Dr. Suzanne Jacobs
Dr. Björn Weeser
Zentrum für internationale Entwicklungs- und Umweltforschung (ZEU) der JLU Gießen
Senckenbergstraße 3
35390 Gießen

The integration of trees on agricultural land, also called agroforestry, is a common practice in the tropics. This practice is also becoming more relevant in temperate regions, like central Europe, as agroforestry is considered a promising approach to make agriculture more resilient to climate change. The trees can, for example, create a suitable microclimate for crops to withstand prolonged droughts or heatwaves. However, a major concern among farmers is whether the trees will compete with the crops for water.

To investigate this, the German Hydrological Society (DHG) awarded Dr. Suzanne Jacobs with a research stipend to conduct a hydrological field study at the agroforestry system that was established at the university research farm Gladbacherhof in February 2020. Using stable isotopes of water (²H and ¹⁸O) in the soil, trees and crops, Dr. Jacobs will trace back from which soil depth the trees and the crops take up their water. This will provide a first insight in whether the trees and crops are likely to compete for water from the same source and will be used as a basis for more in-depth research into the water dynamics in agroforestry systems.

 Silvoarable (i.e. trees on cropland) agroforestry system at Gladbacherhof. The tree lines consist of apple trees, high value timber trees, fast-growing poplar to produce biomass and elderberry shrubs.

Picture: S. Jacobs

Dear Matthias,

We thank you for your continuous support in the organization of the ZEU, the helping hand in project application and processing, the assistance in administration and personnel management and all the other tedious tasks that you solve arising in such a dynamic and diverse environment as the ZEU.

We are looking forward to continuing working with you as successfully as we have done it in the last quarter century that is now coming to an end!

Keep your good humor - even if administrative processes are not always the most humorous tasks in science management.

All employees of the ZEU
All members of the ZEU
The ZEU Board of Directors

by Florian U. Jehn , Luke Kemp , Ekaterina Ilin, Christoph Funk, Jason R. Wang , and Lutz Breuer

Occurrences of temperatures mentioned in the IPCC assessment reports over time. Includes all working group reports, special reports, and synthesis reports published until 11 April 2022 with more than 10 temperature mentions overall

Although a significantly stronger global temperature increase is to be expected in the meantime, climate research is apparently still too much concerned with the so-called 2-degree target of international climate policy. A team of researchers from the Justus Liebig University Giessen (JLU), the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam and the University of Cambridge have expressed their fears that the actual topic is being missed in a recent article in the scientific journal "Earth's Future". The study focuses on how the different global temperature increases presented in the IPCC reports have changed over time. While the first four Assessment Reports focused on temperatures above and below 2°C to roughly equal degrees, the more recent Fifth and Sixth Assessment Reports focus much more on warming below 2°C. This is of concern because warming above 2°C is more likely under current emissions pathways and has more influence on climate risk assessments.     Citation Florian U. Jehn, Luke Kemp, Ekaterina Ilin, Christoph Funk, Jason R. Wang, Lutz Breuer, "Focus of the IPCC Assessment Reports Has Shifted to Lower Temperatures," Earth's Future, 06 May 2022. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022EF002876

Contact

Dr. Florian Ulrich Jehn
Prof. Dr. Lutz Breuer

Professorship for Landscape, Water and Matter Management

Due to the fact that Prof. Ramona Teuber was elected to the ZEU Board, she had to resign from her position as vice speaker of focus area "Food and Energy for formal reasons.

On 17.03.2022, Prof. Matrin Petrick proposed a successor, Dr. Marie Reusch, who was confirmed by the members of the area without any dissenting votes or abstentions. 

On 16.3. the online election of the focal area spokespersons was conducted by the ZEU members.
Of 56 eligible voters, 51 took part. There were no votes against or abstentions in either focus area. The spokespersons are thus confirmed as proposed in a secret ballot, namely
Elena Xoplaki (speaker) and Irina Solovieva (vice speaker) in the focus area Food and Energy Systems

and

Martin Petrick (speaker) and Ramona Teuber (vice speaker) in the focus area Climate and Environmental Change

The Centre Council unanimously confirmed the Executive Board members Prof. Breuer and Prof. Breitmeier in this function for another three years in a secret ballot. 

Dear students of Justus Liebig University,

for the first time, Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá (Colombia) invites the students of selected partner universities to the "Virtual Mobility Program (VMP)", a counterpart to the "Virtual International Programme (VIP)" of JLU, in the first semester of 2022. JLU students have the opportunity to participate virtually in courses offered by the universities at Bachelor's and Master's level. They can choose from around 30 courses, all but one of which are held in Spanish. You can access the course catalogue at the following link.

Online registration is possible until 02 January 2022.

The semester period runs from 24 January to 04 June 2022.
The invitation from Uniandes is an exciting opportunity for all of you to add an international experience to your studies from Giessen and to gain insights into new topics.

Dr. Xoplaki's sub-project of the AI-based DAKI-FWS will apply innovative Artificial Intelligence approaches to prepare weather extremes warnings of high spatial resolution with a seasonal horizon. Climate-related pandemics and subtropical and tropical diseases warnings contribute further to the estimation of outbreaks and evolutions of health crises. Optimally detected heat waves, storms, droughts, and floods as well as compound and concurrent extremes are introduced to AI-enhanced seasonal risk maps. Thanks to its time horizon, the project not only supports adaptation to climate change, it also improves preparedness and increases resilience of economic sectors to the ongoing climate change. The KLIMA-FWS will inform stakeholders and policy makers as well as the public about the accurate probability of occurrence, intensity, spatial and temporal extent of extreme events that are relevant for the German economy and, furthermore, for the different levels and entities of disaster management and civil protection.

The entire ZEU team congratulates Elena Xoplaki on this great success and will do their utmost to support her for a successful project.

• ZEU project website

The main goal of the BIOVALUE project is to develop a dynamic and adaptable tool that analyses the link between biodiversity, the agri-food value chain, the environment and consumer preferences and health. This tool will help to introduce, model, evaluate, produce and disseminate underutilized, genetically diverse crops and marketable end products made from them. These will include partly novel and partly traditional processed food products attractive for consumers and pave the way for agricultural production and market introduction of underutilized crops.

Within the BIOVALUE project, the ZEU-team will, among other things, be in charge of developing the work package tackling the “improvement of biodiversity connections in the agricultural and food sector’s value chain by employing BIOVALUE tools”. This will examine strategies to increase plant diversity for each actor in the value chain as well as the entire value chain. The ZEU team will focus in particular on the role of producers. The focus is on agricultural practices and cooperation strategies that aim to achieve high crop diversity. Together with other partners involved in this work package, ZEU researchers will test the BIOVALUE tool and interpret the results of the model to formulate recommendations for specific actors and the entire value chain. Within this process, it is extremely important to involve multiple stakeholders to ensure acceptance and implementation of the recommended actions.

In addition, JLU will lead the subprojects on modelling the potential impacts of climate change on biodiversity and the changing interactions between biodiversity, soil and water conditions due to climate change. Here, climate projections for the next decades will be generated on daily, monthly, and seasonal scales. Particular attention will be paid to the spatial and temporal distribution of extreme weather events in Europe, which have significant impacts on agriculture.

In addition, the ZEU team will be involved in the BIOVALUE plant breeding program, which aims at multiplying and distributing the underutilized species and varieties. The criteria for selecting these plants include their water-energy efficiency, ecological resilience, high nutritional quality and high potential to enter into value chain.

• ZEU project website
• Pressemitteilung der JLU (in German)

Just in time for the  International Mobility Show IAA in Munich, Prof. Michael Düren's new article „Das Ende der Autobahn“ appeared yesterday in Physik Journal 20 (2021) No. 8/9, which deals with the abolition of motorways in Germany in favour of public transport. This may sound utopian at first but his argument is that this way, a sustainable mobility concept can be realized by saving 90% of the energy for mobility without additional land-use. The article is only available in German, but the same ideas are found in his English lecture series

https://youtu.be/6bF_qvlYRsc