news 2016

German Research Foundation Supports New Research Group at Freie Universität Berlin ' 423/2016 from Dec 01, 2016 A new research project at Freie Universität Berlin is dealing with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The German Research Foundation (DFG) has approved a grant for the sub-project "CONNECT: Networking and Influence of International Secretariats Environmental and Disability Policy over Time" at the Division of Educational Research and Social Systems.

Research news Scientists have conducted the first worldwide study of biodiversity and its impact on the productivity of forests. Data from more than 770,000 observation points from 44 countries were evaluated for this purpose. The samples included in the study comprised 8,700 species of trees from mangroves to trees in tropical rainforests, Central Europe, tundras, and dry savannas to populations in Mediterranean forests.

Research news Small-leaved limes do not transpire to the same extent in all environments as a study by Mohammad Rahman from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) concludes. During the summer heat, transpiration - the loss of water from the leaves - from those trees grown in open green squares cools us down more effectively than grown in narrow, paved squares.

Research news High-resolution aerial Photographs provides information that is both up-to-date and tailored for the task at hand?information that could previously only be obtained by observations in the field and only for a limited spatial area. For the very first time, a team of scientists led by Jan C. Habel at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has used drones to predict suitable microhabitats for the larvae of endangered butterfly species (larval habitats), recently published in Landscape Ecology.

Research news For a number of years now, an increasing number of synthetic nanoparticles have been manufactured and incorporated into various products, such as cosmetics. For the first time, a research project at the Technical University of Munich and the Bavarian Ministry of the Environment provides reliable findings on their presence in water bodies.

Study Indicates Industrial Revolution Had Noticeable Impact on Global Warming ' 283/2016 from Aug 24, 2016 An international research team has now found out that climate change already began 180 years ago, much earlier than believed up to now. To determine the earliest time of global warming, the scientists studied the so-called natural climate archives of the northern and southern hemispheres, both on land and in the oceans, from the past 500 years.

Research news How can we improve the sustainability of our cities in the future? Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed a new methodology for determining the overall emissions of cities. In a case study analysis, they examined three house types in the Munich metropolitan region.

Research news The more it swarms, crawls and flies the better it is for humans. This is the finding of a study published in 'Nature'. More than 60 researchers from a number of universities were involved, including the Technical University of Munich, the Institute of Plant Sciences at the University of Bern and the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre in Frankfurt.

A new Emmy Noether junior research group at Heidelberg University's Institute of Earth Sciences will delve into the central questions of climate history. The research team led by Dr. Jörg Lippold will study the history of ocean currents over the last 30,000 years in an attempt to uncover key parameters for understanding future climatic changes.

Research news Boosting food production with limited water availability is of great importance to humanity. However, our current water usage is already unsustainable today. The fact that plant leaves lose a great deal of water through photosynthesis is the greatest limiting factor for larger harvests worldwide.

Biology Professor Matthias Rillig of Freie Universität Berlin Receives 2. Million Euros to Learn More about Consequences of Gradual Environmental Change by Studying Soil Fungi / With Photos How do organisms react as individuals and in communities to environmental conditions that gradually change over a long period? Using a new experimental approach Matthias Rillig and his team at the Department of Biology at Freie Universität Berlin hope to investigate this issue using the example of soil fungi.

Colorful and extensively used meadows and pastures provide valuable habitats for many plant and animal species. However, they have become very rare. In order to re-establish such grasslands, the plants they contain must be sown. Scientists and nature conservationists argue that seed material from the region in which the future meadow is located should be used.

Whether an animal or plant community remains stable despite external impacts does not depend on biological diversity alone: asynchrony across the species is also a crucial factor. The more the species in an ecosystem fluctuate in their evolution over time, the less they are likely to falter. As a result, diversity takes second place in terms of the factors to be considered in the context of ecosystem stability.

Findings Published in Prestigious Journal Science / Earth Scientist Reinhold Leinfelder from Freie Universität Berlin Is Contributing Author An international group of Earth scientists as well as scientists from other disciplines has determined that the impact of human activities on the Earth marks a new geological era: the Anthropocene.