Afwegingskader voor het beheer van historische dreven

Vlaanderen is rijk aan beschermde historische dreven. Een goed beheer hiervan is essentieel om dit erfgoed door te geven aan de volgende generaties, maar ook om andere waarden zoals de natuurwaarde in stand te houden of te versterken. Het beheer staat voor een aantal uitdagingen die een snelle evolutie doormaakten. De zoektocht naar duurzame oplossingen voor het beheer van dreven maakt het niet evident om hier eenduidige antwoorden op te bieden. Het agentschap Onroerend Erfgoed nam het initiatief om samen met het Agentschap voor Natuur en Bos een afwegingskader op te maken voor een geïntegreerd beheer van deze dreven. Dit kader moet helder maken welke principes en waarden beide agentschappen in overweging nemen in de zoektocht naar optimale scenario\u27s en finaal bij het beoordelen van advies- of toelatingsaanvragen. Dit kader willen beide agentschappen ook bij vooroverleg met de eigenaars en beheerders gebruiken. Het kan ook inspiratie bieden bij de opmaak van beheersplannen voor dreven en hun omgeving

Toward high‐resolution agronomic soil information and management zones delineated by ground‐based electromagnetic induction and aerial drone data

Detailed knowledge of the intra-field variability of soil properties and crop characteristics is indispensable for the establishment of sustainable precision agriculture. We present an approach that combines ground-based agrogeophysical soil and aerial crop data to delineate field-specific management zones that we interpret with soil attribute measurements of texture, bulk density, and soil moisture, as well as yield and nitrate residue in the soil after potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) cultivation. To delineate the management zones, we use aerial drone-based normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), spatial electromagnetic induction (EMI) soil scanning, and the EMI–NDVI data combination as input in a machine learning clustering technique. We tested this approach in three successive years on six agricultural fields (two per year). The field-scale EMI data included spatial soil information of the upper 0–50 cm, to approximately match the soil depth sampled for attribute measurements. The NDVI measurements over the growing season provide information on crop development. The management zones delineated from EMI data outperformed the management zones derived from NDVI in terms of spatial coherence and showed differences in properties relevant for agricultural management: texture, soil moisture deficit, yield, and nitrate residue. The combined EMI–NDVI analysis provided no extra benefit. This underpins the importance of including spatially distributed soil information in crop data interpretation, while emphasizing that high-resolution soil information is essential for variable rate applications and agronomic modeling

Political Leadership in Issue Networks: How Mayors Rule Their World?

In his controversial book If Mayors Ruled the World, US political theorist Benjamin Barber argued that mayors can and do play a major role in solving today’s grand societal challenges in domains like social inclusion and poverty, climate change and sustainability and safety and public order. It is increasingly recognised that meeting such challenges requires concerted action by a multiplicity of actors at different geographical scales and levels of government, and from different sectors (state, market and civil society). Against this backdrop, this chapter analyses the roles of mayors in building governance coalitions, bringing together relevant actors in efforts to meet major challenges facing their communities. What role, if any, do European mayors in different national local government systems play in local governance coalitions? In the chapter, the patterns of interdependence characteristic for various types of issues will be analysed, and we will investigate the role that mayors may or may not play in building coalitions between the various relevant actors. This will serve as the basis for subsequently looking into the success of these mayoral activities. Important issues here are whether the roles of mayors and their chances of being successful vary across different issue domains or across different national local government systems and are different for appointed, indirectly and directly elected mayors

Background document - with guidelines for variable rate application of water and nitrogen in potato

POTENTIA

Dysregulated mitochondrial metabolism upon cigarette smoke exposure in various human bronchial epithelial cell models

Exposure to cigarette smoke (CS) is the primary risk factor for developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The impact of CS exposure on the molecular mechanisms involved in mitochondrial quality control in airway epithelial cells is incompletely understood. Undifferentiated or differentiated primary bronchial epithelial cells were acutely/chronically exposed to whole CS (WCS) or CS extract (CSE) in submerged or air-liquid interface conditions. Abundance of key regulators controlling mitochondrial biogenesis, mitophagy and mitochondrial dynamics was assessed. Acute exposure to WCS or CSE increased the abundance of components of autophagy and receptor-mediated mitophagy in all models. Although mitochondrial content and dynamics appeared to be unaltered in response to CS, changes in both the molecular control of mitochondrial biogenesis and a shift toward an increased glycolytic metabolism were observed in particular in differentiated cultures. These alterations persisted, at least in part, after chronic exposure to WCS during differentiation and upon subsequent discontinuation of WCS exposure. In conclusion, smoke exposure alters the regulation of mitochondrial metabolism in airway epithelial cells, but observed alterations may differ between various culture models used. This article has an associated First Person interview with the joint first authors of the paper