Klimaatwetenschapper Rik Leemans was op vrijdag 22 oktober 2021, samen met energiecoach Rob Groen en gedragspsycholoog Kyron Olmeijer, te gast bij De Week van Gelderland naar aanleiding van de Nationale Klimaatweek. Als het gaat om het behalen van de klimaatdoelstellingen, is Nederland een van de slechtste jongetjes van de klas binnen Europa, zo vertelde hij. "Het implementeren van alle maatregelen gaat ontzettend langzaam. Er moet veel meer gebeuren."
At the sight of the first snowflake, many a Dutchman eagerly anticipates the possibility of a Frisian Elfstedentocht skating marathon. This epic route covers not just 11 Frisian towns but also many lakes. This tour requires just one thing: sufficient ice on our waters. However, not a single Frisian skating marathon has taken place since 1997. An international study published in Nature Geoscience on October 18, to which Wageningen University & Research contributed, now shows that the lakes across the globe are warming up, and the number of days of frost will decline. ‘This warming is not just an issue that spoils our fun on the ice, but may also affect the water quality of our lakes’, the researchers state.
How will the coastal areas of the world be affected by global warming? This is an important question for coastal communities and coastal scientists, engineers, planners, managers and policy makers. A new online viewer provides a quick overview of projections for sea level rise, coastal flooding, shoreline retreat and extreme waves by combining several published state-of-the-art data sets on coastal climatic impact-drivers.
How can research have a transformative impact on society and the environment? That is the main question of the new PhD-course Transformative Research for Global Social-Environmental Challenges. The two-week course is coordinated by Josephine Chambers, postdoc at the Forest and Nature Conservation Policy group, with lecturers from across WUR. ‘The focus is to explore how to combine critical social science and action-oriented methods for societal transformation.’
We have many large public buildings nowadays (like airports, hospitals, train stations). In order to navigate in such buildings, a digital map is needed, similar to Google Maps that became indispensable outdoors. One of our SENSE PhD candidates at the ITC Faculty at the University of Twente, Samer Karam, has developed a SLAM-based backpack mobile mapping system “ITC_Backpack” during his PhD research. The backpack system can access anywhere the operator can walk. It provides a map of the area in the shape of a LIDAR point cloud. Using such a mobile mapping system, mapping a building doesn't require hours, but minutes.
The course "Micropollutants in the water cycle" is the first course to be developed with funding of the new SENSE fund for the development of PhD courses.
The new fund was established in 2020 and will run from 2021-2026. Annually there is €20,000 available to support PhD course development, with a maximum of €4,500 per course.
The 5-day course "Micropollutants in the water cycle" offers a comprehensive overview of the threats to water quality posed by micropollutants, and a multidisciplinary approach to solving this environmental problem.
Smog in our Dutch air. Especially the cities are dealing with that these days. Where does that #smog all of a sudden come from? And why will that be a problem more often on sunny days? Air quality expert Wouter Peters (Wageningen University).
Rector Eddy Moors of IHE Delft discusses the severe rainfall and floods in Germany, Belgium and the south of the Netherlands in national newspaper Algemeen Dagblad (AD). ''If we accept that there will be occasional floods, we should be well prepared, so that the damage is limited. If we do not accept this, we should take action to have better drainage of water.''