Identifying Urban Sources as Cause of Elevated Grass Pollen Concentrations using GIS and Remote Sensing

We examine here the hypothesis that during flowering, the grass pollen concentrations at a specific site reflect the distribution of grass pollen sources within a few kilometres of this site.We perform this analysis on data from a measurement campaign in the city of Aarhus (Denmark) using three pollen traps and by comparing these observations with a novel inventory of grass pollen sources. The source inventory is based on a new methodology developed for urbanscale grass pollen sources. The new methodology is believed to be generally applicable for the European area, as it relies on commonly available remote sensing data combined with management information for local grass areas. The inventory has identified a number of grass pollen source areas present within the city domain. The comparison of the measured pollen concentrations with the inventory shows that the atmospheric concentrations of grass pollen in the urban zone reflect the source areas identified in the inventory, and that the pollen sources that are found to affect the pollen levels are located near or within the city domain. The results also show that during days with peak levels of pollen concentrations there is no correlation between the three urban traps and an operational trap located just 60 km away. This finding suggests that during intense flowering, the grass pollen concentration mirrors the local source distribution and is thus a local-scale phenomenon. Model simulations aimed at assessing population exposure to pollen levels are therefore recommended to take into account both local sources and local atmospheric transport, and not to rely only on describing regional to long-range transport of pollen. The derived pollen source inventory can be entered into local-scale atmospheric transport models in combination with other components that simulate pollen release in order to calculate urban-scale variations in the grass pollen load. The gridded inventory with a resolution of 14m is therefore made available as supplementary material to this paper, and the verifying grass pollen observations are additionally available in tabular form

Landscape Agroecology: managing interactions between agriculture, nature and socio-economy

State of the art GIS and database technologies for landscape scale analysis and the modelling of land use and environmental impacts are presented. These methods have been developed at University of Aarhus in multidisciplinary collaboration with other research institutions throughout Europe; for example during the EU research projects www.mea-scope.org and www.sensor-ip.eu. In the years to come, these landscape scale research methods are further developed and integrated with similar frameworks in other EU countries, and used for scenario studies (see for example the landscape components of http://www.nitroeurope.eu/, http://www.darcof.dk/research/darcofiii/refugia.html or http://www.darcof.dk/research/darcofiii/bioconcens.html). Scenario studies, visualised in geographical information systems, are useful to evaluate possible future landscape developments, and to identify potentials and limitations in combining multiple landscape functions. Here we focus on scenario systems that focus on exploring interactions between landscape functions – e.g. the interactions between farm management, economy, nutrient losses, fauna population dynamics, plant community development etc. Among others, scenarios for drinking water protection via increased set-aside grassland or afforestation are presented. It shows that benefits from subsidies targeted to areas with special interests in protection of drinking waters from nitrogen pollution differ from non-targeted subsidies. Experience has shown that working with scenarios and involving potential users at an early stage in development are important ways of focussing the work effort and ensuring that relevant tools are developed. Developments in data collection and collation at the EU level will allow similar systems to be developed elsewhere

Midterm evaluation of DARCOF II. Increased production and closer relationships between organic and inherent qualities

In October 2002 seven international scientists with expertise on organic farming performed an evaluation of the ongoing Danish research effort in organic food and farming (DARCOF II). The evaluation covers 23 individual projects established in 2000 and the DARCOF II programme as a whole

Overweight and Obesity and the Demand for Primary Physician Care

The standard economic model for the demand for health care predicts that unhealthy behaviour such as being overweight or obese should increase the demand for medical care, particularly as clinical studies link obesity to a number of serious diseases. In this paper, we investigate whether overweight or obese individuals demand more medical care than normal weight individuals by estimating a finite mixture model which splits the population into frequent and non-frequent users of primary physician (GP) services according to the individual's latent health status. Based on a sample of wage-earners aged 25-60 years drawn from the National Health Interview (NHI) survey 2000 and merged to Danish register data, we compare differences in the impact of being overweight and obese relative to being normal weight on the demand for primary physician care. Estimated bodyweight effects vary across latent classes and show that being obese or overweight does not increase the demand for primary physician care among infrequent users but does so among frequent users.overweight, obesity, demand for primary physician care

Economic and competence regions: a descriptive analysis of Danish regions

The prosperity of the capital city and surrounding area has been used as one fundamental argument for localisation of large foreign companies. But recent research on regional systems of innovation has emphasised, not just the structure of the system, like strong educational institutions, better transportation systems and access to political actors, but also the local knowledge base as determinants. Today, the structural factors are less important in part because of ICT, but also because policy initiatives have become embedded in the local political system, whereas the local knowledge base and access to highly specialised personnel like engineers (Dalum et al., 1999) are strongly emphasised. The success factors of a region has been narrowed down to eight (Isaksen (1998) and Voyer (1998)): specialisation within one or more industries; the role of local networks; availability of R&D and educational institutions; access to a qualified work force; access to competent financial institutions; cooperation between firms and other institutions; contacts to knowledgeable milieus elsewhere and a high degree of innovativeness (differences are seen between Isaksen and Voyer, these eight are based on Isaksen (op. cit. page 15-21). The aim of this paper is to explore some of the above mentioned success characteristics for the 14 counties ('aemter') in Denmark to discuss whether the main economic region in Denmark is also the competence region, and to what extent it is successful. The paper tries to assess to what extent the financial strengths or weaknesses reflect the innovation capacity of the region and how the relationship evolves over time. Furthermore, the paper attempts to identify the main drivers of growth within the regional system of innovation. Hence, does the capital region (Copenhagen and surroundings) of Denmark encompass better conditions in terms of the local knowledge base, the scientific and technical potential and the availability of trained personnel than the Western part of Denmark (incl. Funen and Jutland) for the development of knowledge intensive clusters. A discussion of the terms economic and competence region is given in the paper and indicators are applied. The local knowledge base is in particular thought of as the technological and scientific knowledge, which are proxied by patents, bibliometrics and educational data. The dual nature of knowledge production is stressed in the discussion of the regions. On the one hand, the firm localises in areas of complementary knowledge assets within the same industry, but benefits can accrue to a region from the activities of firms in that region (Voyer 1998: 81) as well. Furthermore, the role of universities and research institutes is important in two respects, first as sources of significant innovation-generating knowledge (Acs et al. 1998: 112), and second as educators of future employees of the firms in the region (for empirical tests see Almeida (1999)). To address these issues, the paper presents indicators of the science potential, the availability of personnel as well as the density of scientific and technical personnel. Finally, the role of local policy makers is discussed in two short case studies in the final part of the paper. From the descriptive parts the paper moves on to test whether the above variables are determinants of value added (economic growth), technological specialisation (strong local knowledge base) and international ...?

The contribution of grass and clover root turnover to N leaching

Sources of inorganic and organic N leaching from grass-clover mixtures at field sites in Denmark, Germany and Iceland were investigated. Grass or clover was labelled with 15N-urea four times (autumn 2007, spring, summer and autumn 2008) prior to the leaching season in autumn and winter 2008. Soil water was sampled at 30 cm depth and analyzed for 15N-enrichment of dissolved inorganic N (DIN) and dissolved organic N (DON). Most 15N was recovered in DON for both labelled grass and clover at all sites. At the Danish site, grass and clover contributed more to the DON pool than the DIN whereas the opposite was observed at the German and Icelandic sites. The results show that both clover and grass contribute directly to N leaching from the root zone in mixtures, and that clover contribution is higher than grass. Furthermore, the present study indicates that roots active in the growth season prior to the drainage period contribute more to N leaching than roots active in the growth season the previous year, which is consistent with estimates of root longevity at the three sites