Topic 5 Annual MeetingIn-Person Event

5 Mar 2024, 08:30 → 6 Mar 2024, 17:00 Europe/Berlin

Leipzig, UFZ KUBUS

Sabine Attinger, Jule Thober

Topic 5 Annual Meeting

We cordially invite all scientists, PhD students, students and technical staff working within Topic 5 to the first on-site Annual Meeting of Topic 5 “Landscape of the Future – Securing Terrestrial Ecosystems and Freshwater Resources under Natural Dynamics and Global Change”.

For more information on Topic 5 please see here: https://earthenvironment.helmholtz.de/changing-earth/topics/topic-5-landscapes-of-the-future/

The Meeting will take place at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig, on March 5-6 2024. This will be the first meeting of all our four participating centers: AWI, HEREON, GFZ and UFZ. 

The aims for the Topic 5 Annual Meeting are

• to present and discuss inspiring science of Topic 5, 
• to get to know your colleagues from the participating centers and
• to develop collaborations within Topic 5.

To achieve these goals, entertaining and inspiring presentations, discussions and poster sessions are being prepared with a focus on scientific exchange around our common research topic “Multifunctional Landscapes”.

Please, take the opportunity to get to know and shape Topic 5 research.

Gelaendeplan_UFZ_Leipzig_T5_AnnualMeeting.pdf

KUBUS_Foyerplan_T5_AnnualMeeting.pdf

T5AnnualMeeting_PosterSessions.pdf

Tuesday 5 March

08:30 → 09:30 Registration & Welcome Coffee

09:30 → 11:00 Opening

09:30 Welcome

Speaker: Sabine Attinger

09:35 Get to know your colleagues from Topic 5

Speaker: Ulrike Herzschuh

11:00 → 12:00 Introduction to Topic 5

11:00 Introduction to PoFIV and Topic 5

Speaker: Sabine Attinger

11:10 The 5 Subtopics

Speakers: Bernd Hansjürgens, Dietrich Borchardt, Dirk Sachse, Ingolf Kühn, Sabine Attinger

12:00 → 12:45 Lunch break

12:45 → 14:15 Poster session

14:15 → 16:15 Breakout Sessions

14:15 Digital Twin frameworks for multifunctional landscapes

The Digital Twin approach provides the ability to observe changes in the ecosystem in near real-time and to digitally predict future changes – both allowing for immediate action in case of undesired developments. This also incorporates to implement management strategies and visualise their outcomes. Digital Twin frameworks are characterised by frequent updates and feedbacks between the real world (via monitoring and potential actions) and its digital counterpart (via model predictions and information for decision-making). This session aims to discuss concepts and developments of Digital Twin approaches in Topic 5 for terrestrial ecosystems and to foster exchange on challenges and solutions in integrating all relevant (i) data sources including their frequently updates as well (ii) interactions and feedbacks of these complex systems from the digital counterpart to the real-world system. These encompass feedbacks with natural dynamics as well as responses to human, socio-economic and political measures.

Speakers: Franziska Taubert (UFZ), Ingolf Kühn (UFZ)

14:15 Exploring and managing multifunctional landscapes: A multiscale perspective

In our session, we will present and discuss an interdisciplinary framework for identifying and managing key functions of multifunctional landscapes, integrating insights from sustainable development goals and planetary boundaries. The framework integrates diverse disciplines, including biodiversity research, biogeochemistry, ecology, geology, and hydrology and aims to develop strategic policies and governance methods to protect the vital landscape functions. Aim of our session is to review the current progress of this conceptual framework and strategize future directions.

Speaker: Daniel Graeber (UFZ)

14:15 Extreme events

Extreme events threaten settlements, ecosystem services and human wellbeing. Under ongoing and projected climate and environmental change, improving our understanding and prediction of extreme events and their impacts is essential to increase preparedness and system resilience. This session brings together researchers who work on the broad topic of extreme events (including different types of extreme events, compound events, impact assessments) related to rural and urban landscapes. The session will provide a platform to obtain an overview of the research that is done in the different centers, explore cross-cutting topics, and start new collaborations.

Droughts
1. Emanuele Bevacqua (UFZ) - Direct and lagged climate change effects intensified the widespread 2022 European drought.
2. Peter Greve (Hereon) - Low flow sensitivity to water withdrawals in Central and Southwestern Europe under 2 K global warming.

Precipitation extremes
3. Laurens Bouwer (Hereon) - Extreme rainfall and flash flood events in Sicily: current and projected future risks from the CASCO project
4. Tobias Braun (GFZ) - A novel catalogue of global atmospheric rivers for the study of hydrological extremes

Floods
5. Elena Macdonald (GFZ) - When extreme floods are not as rare as they seem: processes and controls of heavy-tailed flood peak distributions
6. Viet Dung Nguyen (GFZ) - A Non-Stationary Gridded WeathergGenerator for Central Europe for assessment of changes in precipitation and future flooding

Soil heat extremes
7. Almudena Garcia-Garcia (UFZ) - Soil heat extremes can outpace air temperature extremes

Society
8. Christian Kuhlicke & Mariana Madruga de Brito (UFZ) - Examining extreme event impacts and adaptation mechanisms across scales: from micro to macro perspectives
9. Anna Salomaa (UFZ) - Worsening socio-environmental crises ahead: three modes of building resilience

Discussion and wrap-up

Speakers: Jakob Zscheischler (UFZ), Laurens Bouwer (Hereon), Sergiy Vorogushyn (GFZ)

14:15 Fluvial landscapes – from natural systems to cultural landscapes and their future potential

The session is intended to discuss potential natural and anthropogenic events which occurred during the Holocene until today in the Central European Elbe catchment. We would like to discuss and determine (geo)chemical, biological, sedimentological and mineralogical indicators which may be applicable to trace such events, changes and breakpoints in fluviatile archives.

Speakers: Christian Siebert (UFZ), Dirk Sachse (GFZ)

14:15 Interdisciplinary collaboration in human-Earth systems modeling

Human activities are critical determinants of many sustainability challenges faced by human-Earth systems, such as climate change mitigation or adaptation. Yet, human decision making is still underrepresented in Earth system science models. This break-out session will explore opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration within Topic 5, aiming to harness its wide range of social and biophysical science perspectives to develop novel analysis approaches.

Presentations: Examples of interdisciplinary analyses
1. Interdisciplinary sustainability assessment of production systems (Walther Zeug, UFZ)
2. Better understanding regional feedbacks in coupled human-Earth systems for climate mitigation and adaptation: examples from regional climate-land system modelling and questions for the future (Diana Rechid, hereon)
3. Coupled hydro-economic multi-agent modelling approach for low water planning in Thuringia (Simon Werner, UFZ)
4. Catchment-scale digital twin systems (cDTS) for hazard assessment and mitigation. (Hui Tang, GFZ)

Discussion input: The need for interdisciplinary collaboration in human-Earth systems modeling (Christian Klassert, UFZ)

World café: Opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration
1. Human behavior as an input to biophysical models
2. Modeling the impacts of biophysical model outputs on human systems
3. Two-way coupling of human and biophysical models
4. Human-Earth systems models for transdisciplinary research and science communication

Speakers: Christian Klassert (UFZ), Diana Rechid (Hereon), Hui Tang (GFZ), Jasmin Heilemann (UFZ)

14:15 On the interaction of monitoring and modelling

Monitoring data drives models in different ways - such data is needed for model development, parametrization and calibration; but also for validating model results.
The latter is especially important for increasing the acceptance of potential stakeholders: by using current observations, we can demonstrate the predictive power of our simulations models.
In this breakout session, we would like to discuss different model-data fusion applications, related challenges and the way forward to improve interactions between monitoring and modelling. This discussion will be inspired by flashtalks both from the modelling and monitoring perspective.

1. Introduction (Peter Dietrich, UFZ)
2. Importance of quality controlled (long-term) data for model validation and upscaling (Frederieke Miesner, AWI)
3. Dynamizing root water uptake in hydrological models (Sven Westermann, UFZ)
4. Modelling drought impact from tree growth monitoring in northern boreal forests (Stefan Kruse, AWI)
5. Modeling interactions of water fluxes with species and structural diversity in temperate forests (Friedrich Bohn, UFZ)
6. Butterfly monitoring and modelling: we need more than we have? (Guy Pe'er, UFZ)
7. Spatial Connectivity and Ecosystem Health - An Antarctic Perspective (Simeon Lisovski, AWI)
8. The importance of long-term field experiments for modeling soil functions in agricultural systems (Sara König, UFZ)

Speakers: Peter Dietrich (UFZ), Sara König (UFZ)

14:15 Remote sensing of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems

Landscapes undergo continual transformations, necessitating observation and monitoring across various disciplines and scales to understand their dynamics shaped by both natural and anthropogenic factors. In this regard, remote sensing technology plays a key role, allowing for multi-sensor observations with high spatial and temporal resolution. We invite contributions to demonstrate this potential for multi-temporal characterization and monitoring of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.

1. Activities of the Global Land Monitoring (GLM) (Benjamin Brede, GFZ)
2. A hybrid modelling and machine learning approach to infer forest attributes from
   hyperspectral data (Samuel Fischer, UFZ)
3. Presenting remote sensing analysis of Arctic land surface change through a web-
   based tool (Tillmann Lübker, AWI)
4. Monitoring landscape dynamics and disturbances in the Arctic permafrost region
   (Ingmar Nitze, AWI)
5. Multiscale Mapping of Vegetation Patterns for Biodiversity Monitoring (Carsten
   Neumann, GFZ)
6. Remote sensing of soil moisture and extreme events detection (Toni Schmidt,
   UFZ)

Speakers: Sigrid Roessner (GFZ), Martin Herold (GFZ), Jian Peng (UFZ)

14:15 TERENO: Observing and Analysing Earth's Environmental Indicators

This breakout session will explore the latest innovations and significant advancements within our long-term monitoring initiatives at the Northeast German Lowlands and the Harz/Central German Lowland Observatories. We will present and discuss our latest publications and continuing experiments in the field of long-term environmental monitoring and assessment of climate change impacts, including the new data infrastructure offered by the DataHub, improving the user experience for scientists and technicians through self-service functionality. In the second part of the session, we would like to discuss and identify opportunities for future TERENO-related research cooperation with the participants: e.g. research in the fields of forest hydrology, wetlands, geoarchives.

Speakers: Theresa Blume (GFZ), Torsten Sachs (GFZ), Steffen Zacharias (UFZ), David Schäfer (UFZ)

16:15 → 16:45 Coffee

16:45 → 17:45 Keynote Lecture

"The relevance of compound events for understanding extreme impacts", Prof. Dr. Jakob Zscheischler, Head of Department of Compound Environmental Risks (UFZ)
"Bending the curve of biodiversity loss", Prof. Dr. Tiffany Knight, Head of Department Species Interaction Ecology (UFZ) & iDiv

17:45 → 18:45 Get-together & dinner

Wednesday 6 March

09:00 → 10:15 Presentations of Early Career Researchers

1. Emily Solly (UFZ) "Plant-soil interactions under climate change and implications for forest biogeochemistry"
2. Rahmantara Trichandi (GFZ) "Changing climate effects on the deep weathering front: A seismic perspective"
3. Ulrike Scharfenberger (UFZ) "A Land Use Intensity Index (LUIS) for delineating agricultural impacts in stream networks"
4. Pallav Kumar Shrestha (UFZ) "Everywhere and Locally Relevant Streamflow Simulations in Hydrological Modeling"
5. Vanessa Reinhart (Hereon) "Climate data in action: Use of COPERNICUS data for climate-resilient urban planning"
6. Andrea Kaim (UFZ) "The future of German agricultural landscapes - Trade-offs of an agricultural transformation"
7. Korbinian Achmüller (GFZ) "Terrestrial gravimetry as a novel hydrological sensor system"
8. Julia von Gönner (UFZ) "Exploring streams together: Insights into the Citizen Science project FLOW"
9. Cecile Blanchet (GFZ) "Fluvial dynamics and water cycling under warmer conditions: lessons from the past"
10. Christian Klassert (UFZ) "Coupling hydrological and economic models to understand drought impacts and climate change adaptation"

Conveners: Sabine Attinger, Dirk Sachse

10:15 → 10:45 Coffee

10:45 → 12:45 Breakout Sessions

10:45 CANCELLED - MOSES

Unfortunately, this session has to be cancelled.

Speaker: Ute Weber (UFZ)

10:45 Carbon Dioxid Removal

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is an important additional concept for the longer-term reduction of greenhouse gases. Many different approaches (from natural to technical solutions) are currently being developed, with different economic, environmental and social impacts, but also different potential contributions to climate change mitigation and wider societal goals (Borchers et al. 2022). In our session, we want to look at different approaches and the associated dynamics of the carbon cycle. We call for scientific contributions to analyze CDR measures that are currently being developed. Based on these contributions, we will discuss the potentials, risks and uncertainties of CDR implementation, but also the governance of CDR currently being developed in Germany and Europe.

1) Talks and Q&A

Dr Patrick Frings: Towards geochemical tools to quantify CO2 removal by Enhanced Weathering
Prof Dr Daniela Thrän: Assessment of the actual and longer term potential for biobased NETs in Germany

2) Discussion Session: The Draft Proposal on the German Carbon Management Strategy (incl. proposal on revised CCS-legislation)

Introduction: Dr Danny Otto and Dr Till Markus provide an overview of past and current CCS policy in Europe and Germany, highlight its importance in the context of CDR, and present key elements of the proposed German Carbon Strategy, including proposed changes to CCS legislation. They will identify open questions and key challenges to be discussed with the session participants.
Moderated Discussion

Speakers: Daniela Thrän (UFZ), Till Markus (UFZ), Erik Gawel (UFZ)

10:45 CARF Citizen Science-and-Participation@Helmholtz

Helmholtz stands for cutting-edge research to address major societal challenges such as climate change, energy transition, health and environmental protection. Citizen Science (CS) and other participatory research formats enable the exploration, development and implementation of transformative solutions together with society. In this way, research tackles major challenges not only for society, but together with society, and jointly builds a solid evidence base for socio-political solutions. On a national level from 2020 to 2022, the Helmholtz Association, with the participation of other research institutes, has led the development of the white paper “Citizen Science Strategy 2030 for Germany”. This strategy deals with the challenges and potential of citizen science in the next ten years and formulates recommendations for action. In order to meet the associated challenges, a rapid response from the Helmholtz Association and a concerted approach is necessary, and can be addressed by this new Cooperation Across Research Fields (CARF). The proposed break-out session will map existing activities in Topic 5, identify needs, opportunities and challenges , and develop a roadmap for joint working.

1. Aletta Bonn & Julia von Gönner – Einführung in die CARF
2. Elisabeth Kühn - Butterfly Monitoring Germany – Citizen Science since 2005
3. Annegret Grimm-Seyfahrt - IGAMon-Dog: Using private-owned dogs to detect invasive species

Speaker: Aletta Bonn (UFZ, iDiv)

10:45 Forests in a changing earth

Forests are a key component of our earth's system, providing essential landscape function for climate, water balance and biodiversity. This session aims at bringing together researchers investigating forest ecosystem functionality and responses to our changing earth system from different perspectives. However, the grand challenges posed by climate change add a layer of complexity, necessitating a collective effort also together with forest practitioners to comprehensively understand and address the impacts on our vital natural resources. We will start with a round of short presentations to update us on the different aspects that are covered by the participants followed by a discussion on specific topics that are brought up.

1. Introduction (Andreas Musolff)
2. Brainstorming on forest and future challenges (Stefan Kruse)
3. Flash Talks:
   Forest Hydrology at Lake Hinnensee: Comparison of different forest stands (Theresa Blume)
   Forests and climate change (Andreas Huth)
   Simulating treeline dynamics to disentangle drivers and consequences for biodiversity (Stefan Kruse)
   Water quality impacts of forest dieback on water quality in the Harz mountains (Andreas Musolff)
   Prototype development to support decision-making for sustainable preservation of Karlsruhe city forest (Katharina Bülow)
4. Cluster check (clustering and discussing the brainstorming results)
5. WrapUp

Speakers: Stefan Kruse (AWI), Andreas Musolff (UFZ), Florian Knutzen (Hereon)

10:45 Governing the transformation towards sustainable agricultural landscapes

Sustainable, multifunctional and climate-resilient agricultural landscapes can play an important role for achieving many of the SDGs and for mitigating global crises. The Subtopic 5 (mainly UFZ integrated platform project IP 6.1.) deals with political and socio-economic sphere of the agri-food system, and the overall quest to govern a transformation towards sustainable agricultural landscapes. It is complemented by Subtopic 1 (UFZ IP1) dealing with the impact of agricultural land use on ecosystem services. The research involves a wide range of interdisciplinary contributions that investigate, inter alia, the multi-dimensional impacts of agricultural practices on ecosystem functions and biodiversity, the role of farmer behaviour and industry actors, local and regional innovation, the design of national and EU policies, and international trade relations and regulations. This session serves to stimulate discussion on how the different research elements can be better linked within a coherent “story” and/or framework, and to generate ideas for integrative collaboration within and across research units and centers.

1. Introduction (Julian Rode, UFZ)
2. he role of visions in sustainability transformations: Exploring tensions between the Agrarwende vanguard vision and an established sociotechnical imaginary of agriculture in Germany (Christine Polzin, UFZ)
3. Sustainable agriculture at the core of a polycrisis: Why is it so urgent and what is the role of science? (Guy Peer, iDiv)
4. How can a national biodiversity strategy contribute to a social-ecological transformation? (Yves Zinngrebe, UFZ)
5. Motivated but restricted? Conceptualizing external barriers to adopting sustainable agricultural practices (Malin Sophie Gütschow, UFZ)
6. Zukunftsfähige Agrarlandschaften in Deutschland – praktische Maßnahmen und ihre Wirksamkeit im Vergleich (Jessica Stubenrauch, UFZ)
7. Convenient solutions, inconvenient truths - Why supermarkets will not drive food system transformation (Sina Leipold, UFZ)

Speakers: Julian Rode (UFZ), Birgit Müller (UFZ)

10:45 Helmholtz E&E DataHub: products and services for time series, biodiversity and geospatial data

In this breakout session we will present the current activities of the Helmholtz E&E DataHub in general and specifically highlight the developments in community-proven workflows for the ingest, management and provision of time series, biodiversity and geospatial data. The new research data infrastructure solutions will be interactively demonstrated based on concrete scientific use-cases relevant in Topic 5.

Speakers: Thomas Schnicke (UFZ), Martin Hammitzsch (GFZ)

10:45 LandTrans Simulator - A modular system of terrestrial models

LANDTRANS is a modular UFZ model system which is envisioned to form the basis for exploring land management strategies that have the aim to provide renewable resources in sufficient quantity and quality, while at the same time not impairing or even improving important ecosystem functions and their underlying biodiversity. Thus, LANDTRANS is a crucial tool for studying multifuntional landscapes and especially the scientific monitoring of the agricultural transition.
LandTrans modules are supposed to simulate soil functions, biogeochemistry, water and matter flows, productivity and biodiversity under land use (especially management) and climate change (influence of extreme events) on high spaital resolution for Germany and Europe, analyzing and predicting the effects of land management scenarios - embedded in socio-economic scenarios.

With this breakout session we aim to give all interested Topic 5 members the opportunity to get informed about the current status of the LandTrans Initiative. We invite participants to discuss with us possible model applications or sharing data products we generated already.

Speaker: Sabine Attinger (UFZ)

10:45 Solutions for climate resilient cities

Cities are increasingly exposed to complex risks in the face of climate change. They also provide spaces of opportunities to build systemic solutions for achieving greenhouse gas neutrality targets while adapting to climate change impacts. How can co-creative processes between science and society accelerate climate action in cities, how can model- and data-driven approaches support systemic solutions, and what are effective strategies and legal frameworks for their implementation? In this session, we would like to share current research works on these topics and discuss how our findings can be integrated across disciplines to support climate resilient development in cities.

1. Data and model based tools for climate-resilient urban planning - the German Copernicus Lighthouse Project CoKLIMAx (Vanessa Reinhart, Tim Tewes, Jan-Albrecht Harrs, Verena Vögt, Diana Rechid)
2. Mapping urban adaptation: a global database derived from text-mining (Sruti Modekurty und Mariana de Brito, UFZ)
3. Climate resilience of street trees and its relation to tree species richness (Sonja Knapp, UFZ)
4. How relevant is resilient for you? Insights from municipal practices (Christian Kuhlicke, Janine Pößneck und Dieter Rink, UFZ)
5. How hydrological models can support cities to adapt to urban flooding – lessons learned from two transdisciplinary case studies (Markus Groth, Steffen Bender, Thea Wübbelmann, GERICS)
6. Blue-Green Infrastructures for Resilient Cities - Governance Challenges and Approaches (Moritz Reese, UFZ)

Speakers: Diana Rechid (Hereon), Christoph Schröter-Schlaak (UFZ), Christian Kuhlicke (UFZ), Bernd Hansjürgens (UFZ)

12:45 → 13:30 Lunch

13:30 → 15:00 Poster session

15:00 → 16:30 Closing

15:00 Keynotes & discussion round "Transfer & Communication"

Speakers:
- Christian Schwägerl, Journalist and book author in the fields of science, environment and politics
- Carla Schönfelder, Moderator in dialog and participation processes, team ewen
- Prof. Dr. Dietrich Borchardt, Head of the Research Unit "Water Resources and the Environment" and Department "Aquatic Ecosystem Analysis and Management" at UFZ

Moderation: Pia-Johanna Schweizer (RIFS Potsdam)

16:15 Closing & Farewell incl. award ceremony

Speakers: Sabine Attinger, Dirk Sachse