Women’s Fertility and Employment Decisions Under Two Political Systems – Comparing East and West Germany Before Reunification

Over the last decades fertility rates have decreased in most developed countries, while female labour force participation has increased strongly over the same time period. To shed light on the relationship between women's fertility and employment decisions, we analyse their transitions to the first, second, and third child as well as their employment discontinuities following childbirth. Using new longitudinal datasets that cover the work and family life of women in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) allows for taking into account two political regimes and drawing conclusions about the relevance of institutional factors for fertility and employment decisions. Our results suggest that in both parts of Germany women's probability of having a first child is negatively correlated with both employment and educational achievement. Regarding second and third birth risks, this negative correlation weakens. Analysing women's time spent out of the labour market following childbirth we find that in the East almost all mothers return to work within 18 months after birth. In the West, however, this proportion is much smaller and at the age when the child starts nursery school or school, women re-enter the labour market at higher rates. These results point to a strong influence of institutional circumstances, specifically the extent of public daycare provision. A multivariate analysis reveals a strong correlation between a woman's employment status prior to birth and her probability of re-entering the labour market afterwards

Floodplain health in 4d: linking time series vegetation analysis with geomorphology and hydrogeology

Previous approaches to assessing vegetation dynamics have largely focussed on responses to rainfall and temperature, with only a brief consideration given to below-ground processes. However, in groundwater dependent ecosystems, such as those found on the Murray River floodplain, SE Australia, vegetation dynamics are also likely to be driven by changes to below-ground biogeochemical processes. Determining the connections between these aquifers and the pathways through which they are recharged is a key component in sustaining vegetation health in floodplain environments. This approach links climatological, hydrological and soil biogechemical processes to take into account soil-water, regolith-water, and plant-water interactions at a number of time scales in the order of seasons, years and decades. Associations between the hydrogeology, regolith and geomorphology with vegetation can then be elucidated both spatially and temporally. As a result, the primary drivers for land cover and vegetation health change can be determined to aid in developing management strategies on the floodplain. In the Murray River floodplain, it has been estimated that 70% of the floodplain ecosystems show signs of significant decline as a consequence of changes to the hydrological regime. Targeted environmental flows are planned to attempt to preserve iconic sites, but the success of these actions needs to be guided by improved knowledge of hydrogeology, including surface-groundwater connectivity, and groundwater quality distribution. This study reports on the use of time series vegetation analysis using ALOS, Landsat and MODIS data, integrated with 3-D mapping of key hydrogeological elements using an airborne electromagnetic (AEM) survey. The latter provides a snapshot of the soil profile and key elements of the hydrogeology including lithology distribution and groundwater quality, at relatively high resolutions. Correlations between vegetation health and soil and geomorphic units, surface salt distribution, saline groundwaters, river flush zones and perched aquifers reveal important associations and drivers of vegetation health

CO(2)QUEST : Techno-economic assessment of CO2 quality effect on its storage and transport

Presented is an overview of the CO(2)QUEST project that addresses fundamentally important issues regarding the impact of typical impurities in the gas or dense phase CO2 stream captured from fossil fuel power plants on its safe and economic transportation and storage. Previous studies have mainly investigated the impact of CO2 stream impurities on each part of the carbon capture and storage (CCS) chain in isolation. This is a significant drawback given the different sensitivities of pipeline, wellbore materials and storage sites to the various impurities. The project brings together leading researchers and stakeholders, to address the impact of the typical impurities upon safe and economic CO2 transportation and storage. State-of-the-art mathematical models, backed by laboratory and industrial-scale experimentation, are implemented to perform a comprehensive techno-economic assessment of the impact of impurities upon the thermo-physical phenomena governing pipeline and storage-site integrities