Helmut Thiel zum 70. Geburtstag

Am 18.03.2005 beging der Naturschutzbeauftragte des Landkreises Bernburg, Herr Helmut Thiel, seinen 70. Geburtstag, ein willkommener Anlass, den jahrzehntelangen unermüdlichen Einsatz des Jubilars für den Natur- und Umweltschutz zu würdigen und ihm vor allem für das große Engagement in der ehrenamtlichen Arbeit ganz herzlich zu danken

Ecological and evolutionary processes at expanding range margins

Many animals are regarded as relatively sedentary and specialized in marginal parts of their geographical distributions. They are expected to be slow at colonizing new habitats. Despite this, the cool margins of many species' distributions have expanded rapidly in association with recent climate warming. We examined four insect species that have expanded their geographical ranges in Britain over the past 20 years. Here we report that two butterfly species have increased the variety of habitat types that they can colonize, and that two bush cricket species show increased fractions of longer-winged (dispersive) individuals in recently founded populations. Both ecological and evolutionary processes are probably responsible for these changes. Increased habitat breadth and dispersal tendencies have resulted in about 3- to 15-fold increases in expansion rates, allowing these insects to cross habitat disjunctions that would have represented major or complete barriers to dispersal before the expansions started. The emergence of dispersive phenotypes will increase the speed at which species invade new environments, and probably underlies the responses of many species to both past and future climate change

A regionally informed abundance index for supporting integrative analyses across butterfly monitoring schemes

1. The rapid expansion of systematic monitoring schemes necessitates robust methods to reliably assess species' status and trends. Insect monitoring poses a challenge where there are strong seasonal patterns, requiring repeated counts to reliably assess abundance. Butterfly monitoring schemes (BMSs) operate in an increasing number of countries with broadly the same methodology, yet they differ in their observation frequency and in the methods used to compute annual abundance indices. 2. Using simulated and observed data, we performed an extensive comparison of two approaches used to derive abundance indices from count data collected via BMS, under a range of sampling frequencies. Linear interpolation is most commonly used to estimate abundance indices from seasonal count series. A second method, hereafter the regional generalized additive model (GAM), fits a GAM to repeated counts within sites across a climatic region. For the two methods, we estimated bias in abundance indices and the statistical power for detecting trends, given different proportions of missing counts. We also compared the accuracy of trend estimates using systematically degraded observed counts of the Gatekeeper Pyronia tithonus (Linnaeus 1767). 3. The regional GAM method generally outperforms the linear interpolation method. When the proportion of missing counts increased beyond 50%, indices derived via the linear interpolation method showed substantially higher estimation error as well as clear biases, in comparison to the regional GAM method. The regional GAM method also showed higher power to detect trends when the proportion of missing counts was substantial. 4. Synthesis and applications. Monitoring offers invaluable data to support conservation policy and management, but requires robust analysis approaches and guidance for new and expanding schemes. Based on our findings, we recommend the regional generalized additive model approach when conducting integrative analyses across schemes, or when analysing scheme data with reduced sampling efforts. This method enables existing schemes to be expanded or new schemes to be developed with reduced within-year sampling frequency, as well as affording options to adapt protocols to more efficiently assess species status and trends across large geographical scales

Monitoring Klimawandel und Biodiversität - Grundlagen

Der Einfluss des Klimawandels auf die Biodiversität wird wahrscheinlich zunehmen. Das zeigen Modellierungen der zukünftigen Verbreitungsgebiete von klimasensitiven Arten und Biotoptypen. In der Broschüre werden die Grundlagen eines Monitoringkonzeptes zur Erfassung und Auswertung der Auswirkungen des Klimawandels auf die natürliche biologische Vielfalt in Sachsen vorgestellt. Sie umfassen u. a. die Ziele und Rechtsgrundlagen eines solchen Monitorings, diesbezügliche Aktivitäten des Bundes und ausgewählter Bundesländer sowie den Kenntnisstand zu Wirkungen des Klimawandels auf 13 Artengruppen und auf Biotoptypen. 272 klimasensitive Arten und 32 entsprechende FFH-Lebensraumtypen (LRT) wurden als besonders monitoringrelevant ausgewählt und deren Verbreitung in Sachsen untersucht. Für diese Arten und LRT, die sowohl wahrscheinliche »Gewinner« als auch »Verlierer« des Klimawandels umfassen, werden die geeigneten Monitoringmethoden beschrieben

The European Butterfly Indicator for grassland species: 1990-2013

This report presents the fifth version of the European Grassland Butterfly Indicator, one of the EU biodiversity indicators of the European Environment Agency

Assessing landscape-level effects of permanent grassland management and landscape configuration on open-land butterflies based on national monitoring data

Halting and reversing the ongoing insect decline requires in-depth knowledge on key drivers. Due to their sensitivity to habitat quality, butterflies are valuable indicators for grassland management intensity, including mowing. However, most studies examining mowing regime impacts on butterflies are limited to small spatial extents. Here, we tested the potential of citizen science butterfly monitoring data for assessing landscape-level effects of mowing regimes (number of mowing events and timing of the first event) and edge density (density of boundaries between different land-cover types) on butterfly richness, abundance, and community composition. We used generalised linear mixed-effects models to relate nationwide data from the German Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (DEBMS) to high-resolution satellite imagery on mowing events in permanent grasslands (grasslands excluded from crop rotation). As butterfly transects may not consistently be located within grasslands, we ran our models for different thresholds from 0 to 50%, representing increasing shares of the transect route situated within permanent grasslands (10% intervals). We did not find significant associations between mowing regimes and butterflies when focussing on species richness and abundance of all species inhabiting open land. However, we found strong positive associations of delayed mowing with the abundance of grassland specialists with increasing grassland shares per transect. Further, we found negative associations of delayed mowing with the annual number of generations and of more frequent mowing with the abundance of specialists, depending on the share of grassland per transect. Edge density had a positive association with species richness and abundance of species inhabiting open land, as well as abundance of grassland indicator species and grassland specialists in landscapes with a low grassland share per transect. Our findings underscore the importance of low-intensity managed permanent grasslands at the landscape scale for specialised butterflies. Additionally, we highlight the importance of a high density of boundaries for open-land and specialised butterflies, particularly in landscapes with highly fragmented permanent grasslands. To improve future analyses of grassland management impacts, we recommend expanding DEBMS monitoring sites to cover a larger grassland management intensity gradient and to place more transects within grasslands

Eco-evolutionary processes shaping floral nectar sugar composition

Floral nectar sugar composition is assumed to reflect the nutritional demands and foraging behaviour of pollinators, but the relative contributions of evolutionary and abiotic factors to nectar sugar composition remain largely unknown across the angiosperms. We compiled a comprehensive dataset on nectar sugar composition for 414 insect-pollinated plant species across central Europe, along with phylogeny, paleoclimate, flower morphology, and pollinator dietary demands, to disentangle their relative effects. We found that phylogeny was strongly related with nectar sucrose content, which increased with the phylogenetic age of plant families, but even more strongly with historic global surface temperature. Nectar sugar composition was also defined by floral morphology, though it was not related to our functional measure of pollinator dietary demands. However, specialist pollinators of current plant-pollinator networks predominantly visited plant species with sucrose-rich nectar. Our results suggest that both physiological mechanisms related to plant water balance and evolutionary effects related to paleoclimatic changes have shaped floral nectar sugar composition during the radiation and specialisation of plants and pollinators. As a consequence, the high velocity of current climate change may affect plant-pollinator interaction networks due to a conflicting combination of immediate physiological responses and phylogenetic conservatism

Monitoring Klimawandel und Biodiversität - Konzeption

Die im Heft 24 der Schriftenreihe präsentierten Grundlagen werden im vorliegenden Heft 25 zu einer Konzeption vervollständigt. Teilbereiche der folgenden bestehenden Monitoringprogramme sind für eine Einbeziehung in das konzipierte Monitoring Klimawandel und Biodiversität besonders geeignet: FFH-, SPA-, Tagfalter-, Brutvogel- und Wasserrahmenrichtlinien-Monitoring sowie Forstliches Umweltmonitoring. Es werden acht Module vorgestellt, welche bestehende Monitoringprogramme für ein umfassendes Klimawandel-Biodiversitätsmonitoring ergänzen bzw. bisher nicht untersuchte Aspekte abdecken können. Für die Auswertung der Daten wurden zwei komplexe Kernindikatoren entwickelt und anhand realer Datensets getestet, der Community Temperature Index (CTI) und der Areal Index (AI). Beide zeigen für die Artengruppen der Tagfalter und Libellen innerhalb Sachsens einen Anstieg, der unterstreicht, dass die Erhöhung der Jahresmitteltemperaturen in den letzten Jahrzehnten bereits zu Veränderungen in diesen Artengemeinschaften geführt hat

Schlussbericht zum Teilvorhaben: Entwicklung und Test von Methoden zur Generierung eines Lidar- und KI-gestützten Windfeldes auf Basis von Messdaten

Das Verbundprojekt Window -Entwicklung eines Lidar- und KI-gestützten Verfahrens zur großräumigen Vermessung des Windfeldes innerhalb und außerhalb von Offshore-Windparks war eine Forschungskooperation der Universität Kassel mit dem Fraunhofer IEE und dem Unternehmen Energie Baden-Württemberg AG (EnBW). Das Verbundprojekt, bestehend aus zwei Teilprojekten, wurde durch die Universität Kassel als Projektkoordinator geleitet. Das Teilvorhaben: Entwicklung und Test von Methoden zur Generierung eines Lidar- und KI-gestützten Windfeldes auf Basis von Messdaten wurde von der Universität Kassel durchgeführt. Der Fokus des Vorhabens lag auf der Generierung von qualitativ hochwertigen Datensätzen für die Untersuchung der Nachlaufströmungen und die Generierung eines KI-Windfeldes in und um den Windpark. Die Datensätze von zwei Messphasen der Offshore-Messkampagne bilden hierfür die Grundlage. Sowohl für den Onshore- als auch den Offshore-Standort wurden verschiedene datengetriebene Methoden zur Windfeldgenerierung entwickelt, hinsichtlich ihrer Ergebnisse evaluiert und durch Hyperparametertuning verbessert. Das finale Verfahren basiert auf Machine-Learning-Modellen des supervised Learnings, die mittels Betrachtung der frei strömenden Windbedingungen und atmosphärischen Bedingungen einen optimalen Wake-Modell-Parameter für klassische Engineering-Wake-Modelle schätzen. Die Modelle wurden unter anderem auf Lidar-Daten trainiert, die eine Generierung eines Windfeldes in einer Auflösung von 75 m × 75 m ermöglichen. Die im WINDOW-Projekt entwickelten KI-gestützten Methoden zur Generierung von Windfeldern bieten den potenziellen Einsatz für Echtzeitprognosen, die für Redispatch und Flexibilitätsoptionen genutzt werden können. Insgesamt hat die Kombination aus scannenden Lidaren und KI in vielen Anwendungsfeldern das Potenzial einen Mehrwert für die Windindustrie zu schaffen.The joint project Window - Development of a lidar- and AI-based method for the large scale measurement of the wind field within and outside of offshore wind farms was a research cooperation of the University of Kassel, the Fraunhofer IEE and the company Energie Baden-Württemberg AG (EnBW). The joint project, consisting of two subprojects, was led by the University of Kassel as the project coordinator. The sub-project: Development and testing of methods for generating a Lidar and AI supported wind field based on measurement data was conducted by the University of Kassel. The focus of the project was on generating high-quality datasets for the investiga tion of wake flows and the creation of an AI wind field in and around the wind farm. The datasets from two measurement phases of the offshore measurement campaign provide the basis for this. Various data-driven methods for wind field generation were developed for both onshore and offshore sites, evaluated in terms of their results, and improved through hyperpara meter tuning. The final method is based on supervised machine learning models that estimate an optimal wake model parameter for classical engineering wake models by considering free-flowing wind conditions and atmospheric conditions. The models were trained on Lidar data, among other things, which enables the generation of a wind field with a resolution of 75 m × 75 m. The AI-supported methods for generating wind fields developed in the WINDOW project offer potential for real-time forecasts that can be used for redispatch and flexibility options. An extension of the application of scanning Lidars and the AI wind field to far wakes is conceivable in the future but requires greater ranges of the measuring devices. Overall, the combination of scanning Lidars and AI has the potential to create added value for the wind industry in many application areas

Mikroplastik in sächsischen Gewässern: 2020 -2021

Mikroplastikgehalte in Gewässersedimenten wurden erfolgreich mit einem neuen Analysenverfahren bestimmt. Erfahrungen bei der Probenahme, Aufbereitung und Analytik werden beschrieben. Erste Ergebnisse für sächsische Gewässer sind aufgeführt. Die Studie richtet sich in erster Linie an ein interessiertes Fachpublikum aus dem Bereich der Gewässeranalytik. Die Ergebnisse sächsischer Gewässer sind auch für die allgemeine Öffentlichkeit von Interesse. Redaktionsschluss: 30.09.202