Global Change

Entwicklung eines Prozessschemas zum Aufbau von Kapazitäten zum präventiven und innovativen Umgang mit Hitzegefährdung als Beitrag zur nachhaltigen Entwicklung mit Fokus auf kleine Kommunen. (Vorgängerprojekt: Lokale Kompetenzentwicklung zur Klimawandelanpassung in kleinen und mittleren Kommunen und Landkreisen (LoKlim))

Fünfgeld H
Email: hartmut.fuenfgeld@geographie.uni-freiburg.de

Baden-Württemberg. Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst

Australia and Germany are already experiencing serious climate change impacts. In Australia, recent disasters include devastating bushfires in 2019-20 and recurrent flooding in 2021-22. In Germany, recent dryness, drought periods and heat waves have harmed agriculture/forestry, while lethal extreme rainfall events in 2021 in the Ahrtal region destroyed whole communities. The IPCC documents the escalating climate change risks each country faces in coming decades, including the risks of cascading infrastructural breakdown and institutional overwhelm. As climate change adaptation is an urgent government imperative, this project provides a much-needed window into the ‘black box’ of institutional adaptation decision-making in two regions that share seemingly high adaptive capacity but slow adaptation action: Baden-Württemberg, Germany, and Victoria, Australia. The aim is to foster more effective and just public sector adaptation by analysing how and why officials are approaching adaptation the way they are. The research questions are: 1. In Baden-Württemberg and Victoria’s state governments, which groups are working on climate change adaptation and why? 2. What are their professional/disciplinary lenses and how do these shape the risks they prioritise, and the adaptation approaches they favour? How do they perceive cascading, compounding and catastrophic climate change risks? 3. How do work settings affect their perspectives and actions? What role do national differences play? 4. What does this suggest about ‘institutional barriers’ to effective and just adaptation and how these can be overcome? What positive ideas can be gleaned from diverse contexts?

Fünfgeld H
Email: hartmut.fuenfgeld@geographie.uni-freiburg.de

Deutschland. Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung

The Upper Rhine region is particularly affected by the impacts of climate change. Heat waves and droughts, sultriness, tropical nights, but also floods and storms as well as poor air quality have an impact on people and the environment and especially also on small and medium-sized enterprises as well as the involved actors in their daily work. In the transnational research project Clim'Ability Care, several research institutions are working on how to deal with the challenges of climate change. Here it is possible to build on the findings of the previous projects Clim'Ability and Clim'Ability Design. In the new project phase Clim'Ability Care, the focus is on promoting and deriving a new climate-resilient corporate culture. The central question here is how to integrate the dimensions of warning, mitigation, adaptation and care. The specific objectives are to: (1) Selecting sites that are particularly sensitive to climate change due to their climatic and socioeconomic makeup (2) Updating and expanding the toolbox "Clim'Ability", in which climatic stressors and the resulting affectedness, but also adaptation strategies are available online (3) Promotion of a new corporate culture throughout the Upper Rhine region through "learning situations“ (4) Institutionalization through the creation of a new cross-border corporate and risk culture (5) Communication, dissemination and visibility of the project The collaboration between regional universities, public institutions and SMEs promotes synergies between different local, disciplinary and economic cultures. In parallel, the project explores the institutional and economic models and concepts with regard to the sustainability of territorial climate services in the Southern Upper Rhine region.

Gruner S

EU-INTERREG VI

Human influence has long interfered with natural floodplain evolution. While the indirect effects of deforestation on sediment transport and floodplain dynamics have been extensively researched, the socio-ecological processes and feedback mechanisms that determine how fluvial systems evolve along trajectories and path dependencies have only recently entered the scientific debate. We use the concept of a fluvio-social metabolism to illustrate these complex interdependencies between anthropogenic and natural processes that define how natural river systems transitioned into a fluvial anthroposphere. The aim of the project is to decipher the fluvio-social metabolism along path-dependencies and trajectories and to understand system dynamics of the fluvial anthroposphere in the Upper Rhine area. We focus on three specific aspects and their mutual interdependencies: socio-political systems, climate dynamics, and legacy sediments, integrating social and environmental archives as well as detailed laboratory and geostatistical analysis. By combining quantitative, semi-quantitative and qualitative methods we combine social and natural sciences. We seek to determine integrating indicators for the transition from natural floodplains to a fluvial anthroposphere on multiple spatio-temporal scales. Our research analyses the period from medieval times until the onset of the industrial revolution in the region around 1850 with focus on suspected transition periods. We hypothesise that in this fluvio-social system, specific socio-natural and political constellations, including territorial shifts, economical exploitation, institutions, conflicts, climatic variability and extremes, as well as riverine floods, determined path dependencies and trajectories of fluvial landscape evolution that found their expression in the floodplain record as legacy sediments. We follow a multidisciplinary approach that integrates the expertise from different disciplines, combining historic, climatic, and geomorphologic expertise. In three interlinking work packages, we investigate how 1) actors, socio-political constellations and institutions influenced floodplain development, 2) regional climate variability and extreme events impacted socio-ecological processes, and 3) natural and societal dynamics found their expression in the floodplain sedimentary record. Synthesising these various strands of social, climatic and geomorphologic results, we ultimately aim to integrate our insights into deciphering the fluvio-social metabolism. Finally, we evaluate to which degree our results can contribute to model this dynamic fluvio-social metabolism empirically, numerically and multivariate-statistically.

Blöthe J
Phone: 203-9224
Email: jan.bloethe@geographie.uni-freiburg.de

DFG

Under the pressure of global societal challenges, increasing risks in the context of natural hazards pose a significant challenge for many regions in Switzerland, including many smaller mountain communities. Reactions to this challenge include calls for progress in knowledge production and risk communication to ensure a high level of acceptance of risk management measures. The central aim of this project is to expand the understanding of political dimensions of knowledge dynamics in natural hazard risk management and to develop an analytical framework for analysing justice implications. Empirically, the project focuses on a rural community in the Entlebuch region (Canton Lucerne), whose development has been linked to social negotiations on how to deal with natural hazards for a long time (e.g. construction of protective structures against debris flows, establishment of a local avalanche service). Processes and contexts of knowledge production and circulation as well as their interrelations with social processes of spatial production are analysed across scales on the basis of a qualitative field study starting from the local context. Conceptually, the project uses the idea of socio-technical imaginaries (STI) to analyse the links and interactions between normative, epistemic and material dimensions of risk management. Based on intensive analyses of everyday practices and interpretative patterns at a local level, the project relates historical and current spatial visions of desired futures to contestations about the management of natural hazards and related processes of knowledge production and circulation. Based on interviews, informal conversations, observations and document analyses at local, cantonal and national level (e.g. with practitioners, political decision-makers, scientists, residents), the study investigates how past and current visions of desired futures (e.g. concerning the development of rural mountain regions or the significance of technical solutions in socio-environmental relations) materialise in natural hazard risk management and related processes of knowledge production and circulation. In this context, the categorisation of the respective processes in sociotechnical imaginaries across scales is of vital importance.

Rudloff A
Email: anna.rudloff@geographie.uni-freiburg.de

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This is a transdisciplinary project involving two University of Freiburg departments (Geo-botany and Human Geography and Global Change), the University Clinic of Freiburg Institute of General Medicine, the city of Freiburg, and the Eco-station. The City of Freiburg’s “Freiburg Packt An (FPA)” street tree sponsorship program is the nature-based intervention prescribed by the general practitioner of the patient. This prescription (BRx) connects the patient to the researcher and the tree sponsorship program, which ensures access to the FPA coordinator and FPA-sponsored events as well as to education and materials – such as seeds and native plants – provided by the Eco-station in Freiburg. The target intervention group is broadly defined as any adult individual who lives in Freiburg and may be at risk of developing or deepening a non-communicable disease. The target control group consists of individuals who newly register for the Freiburg Packt an tree sponsorship program (independently and without a doctor’s prescription). All research methods and support will be the same for the intervention and the non-intervention groups.

Baldwin Heid K
Email: kelly.heid@biologie.uni-freiburg.de

In I4C, digital-ecological innovations in the form of artificial intelligence (AI) based methods are developed and used to help adapt cities to challenges of climate change. A process chain from data acquisition to analysis and environmental prediction to concrete adaptation measures is being tested. The project is accompanied by systematically considering ethics implications and the reciprocal transfer of knowledge among different actors as part of dealing with AI at city level . The project is geographically anchored in the Freiburg region. Its results will be demonstrated using the Green City Freiburg as an case study. Today, over 75% of the German population lives in cities. Cities are sensitive hubs of social and cultural life and commerce. Extreme weather events, such as floods, heat waves or storm events, which will occur more frequently due to climate change, are increasingly challenging for cities. Adapting to changing conditions is essential for the long-term protection of our population and economic viability. Digital-ecological innovations have the potential make a significant contribution towards building capacity for climate change adaptation. Due to the complexity of urban systems, AI methods play a special role. Through AI, complex calculations such as short-term and locally specific forecasts of extreme events, long-term projections of risks, or intelligent real-time control mechanisms can be implemented more efficiently and reliably. I4C addresses these challenges. An AI-supported process chain is being developed that will ultimately deliver measures to improve the adaptability of cities to extreme events. Meteorological process models and climate simulations are used to identify areas in cities that are vulnerable to heat, flooding and storm. The stress situations and associated impacts are simulated, quantified and visualized in a semantic 3D model at the spatial resolution of individual buildings. On the basis of the simulations, experts are able to propose concrete measures that can be systematically applied in politics, law and planning and the effects of which can be evaluated. Control elements, e.g. for building automation, are also derived. The process chain will be tested using the city of Freiburg as an example. For the realization of I4C, an interdisciplinary team from the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg and from Fraunhofer institutes in the fields of computer science, engineering, meteorology, hydrology, economics, politics, law and social sciences is joining forces with companies from the region in the field of mobile mapping, sensor manufacturing, urban planning, energy supply and consulting, public authorities as well as the Green City Freiburg. The Chair group of Geography of Global Change is involved in two sub-projects of I4C: Within the framework of a work package, ethical dimensions of AI-based modelling and prediction methods are identified and discussed in I4C. In a series of workshops and discussion forums on ethical issues, actors involved in the project will be sensitized to emerging ethical implications of the AI-based procedures developed in the project. As part of a further work package, the possibilities and limits of integrating AI-based approaches into municipal climate change adaptation processes will be examined from an institutional and planning perspective and, in cooperation with the city of Freiburg, reviewed in terms of their practical relevance and feasibility.

Fünfgeld H, Speidel A
Phone: +49(0)761 203-3560; +49(0)761 203-3568
Email: hartmut.fuenfgeld@geographie.uni-freiburg.de; alexandra.speidel@geographie.uni-freiburg.de

BMU - KI-Leuchttürme für Umwelt, Klima, Natur und Ressourcen

During the last five decades, state-led resettlement has accompanied many construction projects of dams – especially in the Global South – and has been framed as a side effect that needs to be accepted in order to foster development (see Rogers/Wilmsen 2019). However, resettlement is nowadays increasingly taking place in response to extreme weather events that become more frequent and intense, also due to climate change (see e.g. Arnall 2014). On a global level, low-lying coastal regions which often have a high population density and are threatened by flooding and coastal erosion due to global sea level rise are particularly vulnerable. For instance, in some areas of the Volta River Delta in southeast Ghana, the coastline has been shifted inland by up to three kilometers, an incremental process that was triggered by a combination of rising sea levels and sediments of the Volta River being retained by the Akosombo Dam. As a result, entire villages literally were swallowed by the erosion processes of the Atlantic Ocean. For this reason, from 2017 onwards, state institutions set up a resettlement village for several hundreds of affected households on a piece of reclaimed land in the lagoon of Keta, east of the mouth of the Volta River. Unsatisfyingly, resettlement so far has been scientifically examined mostly in the context of dam projects and not so much against the background of climate change. In addition, those studies often aimed at optimizing the resettlement process without questioning resettlement and the logics behind in the first place. Thence, Rogers and Wilmsen (2019) called for a critical geography of resettlement, i.e. studies in the field of geography that critically and profoundly examine resettlement projects. The research project will make a contribution to this new field of research and therefore analyzes the Ghanaian example described above as part of a case study. Abstracted from the case study, it deals with geographies of resettlement in the context of multi-scale processes of environmental change and degradation, which are examined from the standpoint of political ecology. The corresponding analytical framework is based on theories of power (e.g. Foucault), violence (e.g. Watts, Nixon) and justice (e.g. Rawls, Sen). The research project focuses on three key elements within the resettlement processes: actors, power and interests. Buildung on this, three research questions are pursued: 1) How did different actors use their respective power to shape the resettlement process in a way that serves their own or others’ interests? 2) How was resettlement legitimized and by whom? 3) Which social, political and economic effects on resettled people can be identified and to what extent can they be linked to certain resettlement practices applied? As part of the research project, several phases of field research are be necessary to collect primary data in the Volta River Delta. The methodological toolbox used during these stages contains qualitative and ethnographic research methods of geography.

Friedrich Neu
Phone: +49(0)761 203-54233
Email: friedrich.neu@geographie.uni-freiburg.de

- Kurzstipendium für Doktorand*innen des Deutschen Akademischen Austauschdienstes (DAAD) zur Finanzierung der Feldforschung 2020 (nicht in Anspruch genommen wegen Reisebeschränkungen nach Ghana aufgrund von Covid-19), - Promotionsstipendium des Evangelischen Studienwerks Villigst, finanziert aus Mitteln des Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF), inkl. Förderung von Feldforschung (01.08.2020 bis voraussichtlich 31.03.2025)

High-mountain environments are highly sensitive towards a warming climate, which is dramatically reflected by the shrinkage of alpine glaciers. With more and more glaciers disappearing, attention has moved towards the hydrological importance of ice stored in the periglacial environment, projected to exceed glacier ice volume in the European Alps by the mid-21st century. However, surprisingly little is known about the current state of the ice stored in the periglacial zones of alpine landscapes. Our project aims to disentangle the contribution of active layer and permafrost body to the summer runoff from the upper Kaiserberg catchment in the Austrian Alps. To achieve this goal, we combine repeated electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) surveys on the Kaiserberg rock glacier with continuous discharge measurements from two hydrological stations that we installed in the basin. We further collect water samples over the course of the summer that are analysed for δ18O and δ2H isotopes and the radio nuclide 129I , that allow us to differentiate thawing permafrost from active-layer or precipitation derived discharge.

Dr. Hohmann Förderung der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Köln; Hanna Bremer Stiftung

Suspended sediment load dominates the sediment export from most lowland rivers around the world, also constituting a significant transport medium for pollutants and contaminants. This has important implications for the management of river systems that aims at achieving a good ecological and chemical status, as required for instance by the European Water Frame directive. A thorough understanding of the sources, transport mechanisms and sinks of suspended sediment is therefore a crucial prerequisite for successful management. However, sources and sinks of suspended sediment and the resulting concentration in the river water are highly variable throughout the year and in between years. In this project, we are interested in the spatiotemporal variability of suspended sediment transport in major German lowland rivers. In a first publication, we find that distinct breaks in the scaling relationship between suspended sediment concentration and discharge are induced by the organic matter concentration

Hoffmann Th