Remote sensing of clouds with longwave infrared cameras at the Pierre Auger Observatory

Knowledge of atmospheric conditions at the site of a cosmic ray observatory is important, especially for measurements made using the fluorescence technique. At the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina, an extensive network of meteorological instruments is dedicated to atmospheric monitoring, several of which are used for the remote sensing of night-time clouds. Clouds can be identified passively by detection of the thermal radiation they emit, and are often strong radiators at long-wave infrared wavelengths. As part of the University of Adelaide’s contribution to the Observatory, we have in- stalled four infrared cameras at the Observatory for cloud detection. The current generation cloud cameras are radiometric, and are sensitive to the 8–14 μm waveband. However, identifying clouds is not necessarily straight- forward as atmospheric water vapour also absorbs and emits radiation at these wavelengths. In this dissertation, I present the method that I use to identify clouds in our thermal images. Another major focus of my studies has been to calibrate our cameras. However, as they were already collecting data at the Observatory, the routines had to be developed remotely. These methods have been reproducible for each of our cameras, and could perhaps benefit other researchers in this field.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Physical Sciences, 201

Forests and climate change: adaptation and mitigation

ETFRN news No. 50: Forests and Climate Change: adaptation and mitigation. This newsletter contains interesting materials for those who think about the question how to proceed with forests and climate change after Copenhagen, with or without an agreement. Here below are presented some observations from this newsletter: • Adaptation and mitigation are separate issues in the climate discussions, but in forest practice they are two sides of the same coin. • We need forest management directed at the realization of different objectives at the same time, we do not need pure ‘carbon forests’. Not addressing ‘people’ and ‘planet’ considerations is increasingly seen – by both the public and private sector – as a business risk. • Not all countries will be able to comply with REDD rules in the short term. The voluntary carbon market will remain important. • REDD is an opportunity and a risk for local communities. Risks should be made transparent, and open and equal participation by communities in design and decision-making should be promoted • REDD and other forest-based climate change mitigation measures are likely to be low-cost and effective in the short to medium term. Some stakeholders fear that forests may become a too-cheap mitigation option and corrupt the overall climate agreement. In most calculations, however, the costs of developing, operating and managing the institutional system required to produce credible and sustainable forest carbon credits are not internalized in forest carbon prices. If they were, forest carbon prices would become much higher and more realistic. • The role of forests must be clarified and articulated in National Adaptation Programs of Action (NAPAs). At present most political attention and financing is focused on REDD, and, in general, on climate mitigation. Only recently has the concern for the role of forests in adaptation gained ground; this emanates from the growing recognition that climate change will happen anyway. Moreover, climate change will affect the most vulnerable ecosystems and poorer regions. • There is a clear need for harmonization and coherence in the certification market (SFM, and carbon, fair trade etc.). Certification is not necessarily the only credible basis for payment. As illustrated in this issue, mutual trust can be an alternative, particularly for small-scale initiatives that cannot afford the high transaction costs of certification

Quantification of methane oxidation in the rice rhizosphere using 13C-labelled methane

In this paper isotope ratio mass spectrometry is used to determine the methane (CH4) oxidation fraction in the rhizosphere of intact rice plant-soil systems. Earlier studies on quantification of the methane oxidation were based on inhibition or incubation procedures which strongly interfered with the plant-soil system and resulted in a large variability of the reported fractions, while other studies considered stable isotopes at natural abundance levels to investigate methanotrophy in the rhizosphere of rice. The current work is the first that used 13C-labelled CH4 as additive and calculated the oxidation fraction from the ratio between the added 13C-labelled CH4 and its oxidation product 13CO2. Both labelled gases could be distinguished from the natural abundance percentages. The oxidation fraction for methane was found to be smaller than 7%, suggesting that former approaches overestimate the methane oxidation fraction.

Social environment and healthy ageing

growing numbers of people living to older ages, age-related diseases have become an increasing challenge for societies everywhere. Many age-related diseases however, should rather be considered lifestyle-related diseases since lifestyle plays an important role in the etiology and the treatment of cardiovascular disease, obesity, type 2I diabetes and many forms of cancer. This has led to a large body of literature investigating the possibility to change people’s lifestyle. Interventions with, for example, physiotherapists that engage in daily physical activity with older people have shown substantial benefits, even reversing type 2 diabetes and some characteristics of the ageing process (1,2). Most lifestyle interventions, however, struggle to achieve sustained, long-term behavioural change (3,4). Few individuals can maintain the effort to adopt a new diet or exercise regime themselves, without intensive coaching by professionals. These interventions are therefore expensive and this hinders the widespread and continued delivery to the growing number of older people with unhealthy lifestyle and (risk for) age-related disease. Therefore, it is important to explore novel sustainable and cost-effective methods for lifestyle interventions to combat the burden of agerelated disease in ageing societies. One often overlooked influence on the health behaviour of older people is the effect of the social environment. We believe that peer coaching, in which older people coach each other in achieving lifestyle changes, is such a promising method to deliver health benefits in a sustainable, scalable way. Although there is substantial documentation of the effect of peers on adolescents and children, the influence of peers has been overlooked in older people. In peer coaching, the social environment is applied as a method to deliver an intervention. Peer coaching is a face-to-face intervention in which a group is led by a peer, a non-professional, who shares a common background with the participants. A peer coach uses experiential knowledge to understand the wishes, motivations, possibilities and limitations of the participants. In the secondary prevention of alcohol abuse, peer coaching is already applied very successfully through Alcoholics Anonymous, which delivers health benefits through peer coaching to over two million members spread over 150 countries (5,6). Since increasing physical activity is able to ameliorate so many characteristics of the ageing process, we have studied a proof-of-principle in which peer coaching is applied to establish a sustainable and cost-effective increase in physical activity of a group of older adults in The Netherland

Overview FLEGT related stakeholder processes and initiatives in the European Union and The Netherlands

This review gives an overview of FLEGT related stakeholder processes and initiatives in the European Union and The Netherlands. The EU and Malaysia are in a process of preparing a Voluntary Partnership Agreement within the FLEGT process that is aimed at guarantied supply to the EU of legal timber. This is a process in which various groups of stakeholders have a keen interest and look very critically at what governments are doin

Success has many fathers, failure remains an orphan

Was the sharp upturn of life expectancy in the Netherlands partly due to increased health care funding for the elderly? I argue that there is nothing unusual to the increasing life expectancy since the beginning of the twenty-first century, and that there is no observable relationship with changed health care funding whatsoever. What was highly unusual was the rather dramatic lagging of Dutch life expectancy between 1980 and 2000. The reasons of this failure remain clouded in mystery