July 2019

CLR’s Dmitry Schepaschenko to serve as guest editor for a special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292), a peer-reviewed open access journal about the science and application of remote sensing technology, and is published semi-monthly online by MDPI.

The Special Issue "Forest Biomass and Carbon Observation with Remote Sensing" aims at gathering contributions exploring remote sensing approaches to quantify woody biomass and carbon stocks in forests and woodlands. We encourage applications tackling issues of integrating ground and satellite data for calibration and validation of remote sensing-based biomass observations. Contributions dealing with various types of sensors (active and passive) and carriers (terrestrial, airborne, unmanned aerial vehicles, space-borne) or combinations are welcome. Applications of data collected by new instruments (GEDI, ICESat-2) or within the framework of recent biomass mapping approaches (e.g., GlobBiomass, Biomass CCI) and their integration with state-of-the-art research to track biomass variation in space and time are very welcome. The key role of biomass remote sensing in forest and vegetation modeling, biodiversity, and forest management assessment is going to be the focus of this issue as well.

Image: © mdpi.com
Text: from publisher website

JULY 2019

Emil Fulajtar from Joint FAO/IAEA Programme: Nuclear techniques in Agriculture, UN office, Vienna, Austria visited on July 1, 2019. The purpose was to discuss possible EPIC-IIASA team contribution to IAEA publication on soil erosion in Africa with regional soil erosion estimates from the EPIC model, as well as to outline further collaboration in more general terms. 

Soil erosion is an important driver of soil and land degradation in many regions of world. Part of FAO/IAEA Joint Programme activities is therefore oriented towards measuring soil erosion with radionuclides to support sustainable land management in sensitive areas. Recently, the EPIC-IIASA team provided a new set of global simulations for CIRCASA project assuming crop management scenarios which possibly could improve soil organic carbon content in soil via tillage intensity, crop residua management and introduction off-season cover crops. 

New simulations also estimated soil erosion rates and rates of soil organic carbon lost with soil sediments globally. Estimated soil erosion rates were compared to soil erosion measurements by ¹³⁷Cs radionuclide technique, including many regional studies done under the direct coordination of IAEA. EPIC-IIASA provided realistic estimates for many regions of world. Some areas where soil loss was highly overestimated were also identified, mostly in wet tropics. The possible reason is lack of knowledge on how local crop management strategies such as terracing could protect soil. Further integration of the knowledge from IAEA and their network of collaborators on long-term soil erosion rates and associated local soil management with EPIC-IIASA model could provide better basis for land use optimization in the target regions of the RESTORE+ project focusing on restoration of degraded land in tropical areas.

Image: © Krylon80 | Dreamstime.com

JUNE 2019

Jason Neff, director of The Sustainability Innovation Lab at Colorado(SILC), at University of Colorado (CU), Boulder, US visited between June 10 - 14 and worked together with EPIC-IIASA developer’s team on a joint paper aimed to introduce a prototype of a tool for localized farmers advice based on regional modelling results, on-fly EPIC simulations, and additional information provided by farmers via mobile apps. This work is mostly related to the LandPKS app development efforts at CU done within the wider frame of LandPotential.org activity. This activity brings together many institutions from across the world including IIASA. The goal is to come up with scientifically sound tools for estimating the land productivity and potential land degradation for currently not used agricultural land or the land which is not used to its full potential.

A current case study on the site-specific farmers support prototype also involves the Crop Research Institute (CRI) in Prague, Czechia (Mikulas Madaras, deputy director). CRI provides their data from long-term experiments, mimicking the farmers inputs under optimal and sub-optimal conditions, which is important for developing and testing the algorithm under different scenarios of the data availability, as well as this is important for estimating the value of information provided by farmers.

Image: © Marcin Jucha | Dreamstime

JUNE 2019

In June 2019 Rodelyn Jaksons from the University of Canterbury and Institute of Environmental Science Research (ESR), New Zealand, presented her study co-authored by Dr. Elena Moltchanova entitled “Modelling the population emergence dynamics of the western corn rootworm, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera, using the Gompertz curve and Bayesian hierarchical models”. The study is based on monitoring data on the number of trapped beetles from different locations across Austria provided by the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Vienna. Climactic variables used in the research were obtained from nearest weather stations. 

The seminar was followed up with exciting discussions with CLR colleagues, as the work presented is relevant to some ongoing work, e.g. SEPA project dealing with CWD in the moose population dynamics, machine learning (big data) approaches in the G4M and FLAM models, as well as calibration of the Richards family functions based on the yield tables and plot data.

Image: © Vasyl Duda | Dreamstime.com

MAY 2019

Professor Antonio Bonomi from the Brazilian Biorenewables National Laboratory (LNBR) and Head of Sustainability Division, visited the IIASA ESM program on 20^th of May 2019. Dr. Bonomi is the coordinator of the BioValue project which runs in parallel with the H2020 BECOOL project, for which the ESM program is a partner. Both projects inquire the feasibility of the production of advanced lignocellulosic biofuels in Brazil and in Europe respectively. The visit of Professor Bonomi was the first of a European tour among some partners of the BECOOL project prior to the kick-off meeting of the BioValue project in June 2019. This meeting helped to initiate the collaboration between the two projects.

Linked to his visit, Professor Bonomi gave a seminar on renewable jet fuel production and sugarcane biorefineries based on techno‑economic and environmental analysis within a Brazilian context. 

Image: © fdtgroup.org

MAY 2019

UNECE/FAO Forest Communicators’ Network – Annual Meeting 
20-22 May 2019, Oslo, Norway. 

The annual meeting of the UNECE/FAO Forest Communicators’ Network (FCN) took place on 20-22 May 2019 in Oslo, Norway. Hosted by the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research, the meeting was attended by 28 participants from 9 countries and 14 organisations. 

The objectives of the meeting were to exchange experiences on communicating effectively within and outside the forest sector and to gain new perspectives on communication through social media. 

National communication experts presented best practice examples, all presentations together with material from the social media training are as well available on the meeting website. CLR Centre Head and ESM Deputy Program Director Florian Kraxner presented the “Cool forests at risk” conference which was held 17- 20 September 2018 in Laxenburg, Austria. The central goal of the conference was to inform science to develop transdisciplinary strategies for improved collaboration and communication while promoting the values of boreal forests for the climate, bioeconomy and people. 

All presentations held at the meeting are available at the website.

The Annual Meeting Report can be accessed here. 

Image: © UNECE/FAO 

Text adapted from UNECE/FAO