Oeko Institut

Population genetic diversity (GD) is essential for long-term adaptation of wild species to changing environments. Humans have eroded ~10% of global GD, a silent crisis undermining food security, health and climate resilience. Effective population size Ne is a genetic parameter crucial for monitoring GD, understanding evolutionary processes and designing conservation strategies as it impacts the rate of random genetic drift, inbreeding, and adaptive potential. The “proportion of populations within species with Ne above 500” (Ne500) is an indicator endorsed by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework that can be calculated from DNA-based or proxy data. Our aims are (1) to develop best practices for estimating Ne when genetic data is available, and (2) to operationalize this indicator via FAIR workflows to facilitate its reporting to the CBD. We intend to improve the estimation of Ne by accounting for life-history traits (LHT) such as longevity and reproductive strategies. We implemented an existing LHT-based categorization framework based on demographic matrices across a wide range of taxa. This allowed us to select DNA datasets from a subset of 18 European species across the main categories of the LHT framework, thus covering a large range of evolutionary histories and biological characteristics. We estimated genetic Ne and other population genetic metrics for 195 populations across the 18 species, and explored their variation across the LHT framework. We observed a large variation of Ne estimates across LHT categories, including populations with Ne below and above 500. We showed a negative relationship between Ne and population-specific divergence across a large proportion of LHT categories. We discuss situations where genetic or genomic data offer clear advantages over proxy data for reporting the Ne500 indicator, and we highlight the practical challenges of reliably estimating Ne in natural populations, particularly when spatial and age structures interact.We are currently implementing operational workflows for end-users to compute Ne500 from a representative set of populations on the Galaxy-Ecology platform. These workflows infer genetic clusters to help with delimiting populations and control the effect of genomic data quality on Ne estimates.

Abstract. Forests provide crucial ecosystem services, but are vulnerable to climate-related physical and biological stresses, such as droughts, pests and pathogens. The rapid climate change currently observed increases the pressure on forest ecosystems, with already drastic consequences, e.g., widespread tree mortality across Central Europe. However, we fall short of understanding underlying process dynamics and their impacts on the Earth system. To better understand and predict forest ecosystem dynamics and the associated energy, carbon and water fluxes, detailed knowledge of ecosystem structure, processes and functioning under constantly varying conditions and across different spatial and temporal scales is needed. The ECOSENSE project brings together engineers, environmental and data scientists to establish novel environmental monitoring approaches and to capture distributed forest carbon and water flux dynamics in space and time with a wide range of established measurement technologies and newly developed sensors. Here, we describe the required infrastructure – called ECOSENSE forest – with regard to physical structures, power supply, communication network and data management, that supports such novel environmental sensor networks. We established a comprehensive monitoring system in this ECOSENSE forest, spanning from below-ground to above-canopy with three large scaffold-towers in different plots. More than 670 commercial and 430 self-built sensors monitor over 90 distinct parameters, fluxes, or processes generating upwards of 4,500 time series that capture soil, tree and atmosphere processes with high spatial and temporal resolution. In particular, our design objective is to provide a stable, flexible and secure forest research infrastructure with power, communication and data management using low-cost and commercially available components that meet the needs of various research disciplines. Our considerations and experiences provide impulses and practical solutions for establishing robust, low-cost distributed field research infrastructures and thus increase data continuity and resilience to disruptions at remote locations. The ECOSENSE forest may thus serve as a blueprint for future projects with similar goals and challenges.

Abstract When multiple studies on the same research question, or multiple analyses of the same dataset are summarized in a meta-analysis, our confidence intervals (CIs) are put to a relentless test of reliability. While we might hope that 95% of the CIs would contain the meta-analytic mean value (and therefore presumably also the true value), a recent meta-analysis of 512 meta-analyses in ecology and evolution suggests that only a sobering 45% of them do. As this paradox of overconfidence continues to confuse researchers, we attempt to explain where most of the heterogeneity in findings might be coming from. On the one hand, heterogeneity is unsurprising because conventional 95% CIs refer only to the uncertainty due to sampling noise, but not to any other source of error such as arbitrary analysis decisions (“model uncertainty”). Being aware of multiple sources of error beyond sampling noise, the replication crisis logically follows from an anticonservative statistical practice that allows for overinterpretation beyond the legitimate inference space, which in fact is narrower than commonly acknowledged. We explain how to calculate extended confidence intervals (CIext) that also cover other sources of biological and analytical heterogeneity, and we clarify which CIext is valid for which extended inference space. We further show how multiple versions of analysis of the same dataset can be merged into a many-analyses meta-analysis (MAMA) which yields a CI that accounts for two sources of error. Yet, on the other hand, we also recognize that analysts which summarize multiple results (e.g. meta-analysis, multiverse analysis, many-analyst studies) will often find high levels of heterogeneity because they “compare apples and oranges” (either in terms of statistical metric or biological interpretation). Therefore, the estimate of only 45% deserved confidence appears far too pessimistic. Overall, we need considerable caution in interpreting both confidence intervals and estimates of heterogeneity, and we need to become better at keeping apples and oranges separated.

The duration of interim storage for high active waste depends directly on the progress made in the site selection process up to the commissioning of a deep geological repository. This has various implications for interim storage, e.g. with regard to the evolution of the ageing casks, their inventories, buildings and the public participation at interim storage sites. In addition to the time dimension, other aspects of the link between interim and final storage become apparent. The results have been summarised in a publication of the TRANSENS project.Under constant environmental conditions the transport and storage casks used in Germany are subject to practically no detrimental changes even in the long term. The functionality of the cask components e.g. the double lid sealing system has to be demonstrated in the licensing procedure. Their long-term behaviour is still the subject of research. For the inventories, in particular the fuel rod cladding tubes, a reduction in integrity is to be expected over storage periods of more than 40 years. It is important to note that this may affect later manageability in the context of conditioning as an interface to final disposal.The storage buildings were designed for a service life of 50 years in accordance with the accepted state of the art at the time. As part of the structural protection measures of a storage facility, the buildings must not only be examined for ageing processes within the framework of a new license, but it should also be possible to predict their condition development as accurately as possible. A suitable instrument for this is the adaptive lifetime prognosis based on continuous measurement technology.As part of the licensing procedure, public participation is formally provided for in the environmental impact assessment. If the storage license is extended once, no further participation may take place. As this is in contrast to the extensive participation in the siting of repositories, it leads to unequal treatment, which should also be addressed. In addition to the establishment of independent opportunities for dialogue, it is also proposed that municipal representatives be included in the site selection process. Participation formats should be regularly evaluated and adapted.The authors assume that public participation and studies on the further development of the state of the art in science and technology with regard to the stability and integrity of the storage buildings, casks and cask inventories will make a decisive contribution to maintaining safety. It can also be assumed that relevant research issues will probably not be fully resolved by the time new licenses are applied for. For this reason, in addition to recurring inspections and periodic safety reviews of storage facilities every 10 years, accompanying research should also be included in the licenses applied for. The exchange of experience on the respective results will also be important in order to achieve the best possible results and to be able to organise the storage period safely.

Flow regimes of river ecosystems worldwide have undergone substantial changes because of water resource development, altering the way in which organic matter is generated and cycled throughout entire river catchments. Flow–ecology studies have focused on structural variables measured at small spatial scales. This creates a challenging mismatch when applying adaptive flow management for ecosystem functioning at a catchment or regional scale. Here, we sought to inform flow management by evaluating the drivers of ecosystem metabolism in a regulated river and assessing our ability to predict metabolism at unmonitored locations. We estimated rates of ecosystem metabolism from high-frequency monitoring of dissolved oxygen concentration at eight sites on the Lachlan River of Australia’s Murray–Darling Basin. We then applied a spatio-temporal stream network model to predict metabolism at unmonitored locations using only remotely sensed and gauging station predictor variables. Gross primary productivity (GPP) was higher at sites with lower mean annual discharge, and strong seasonal patterns in rates of productivity tended to be disrupted by rising flows. Similarly, ecosystem respiration (ER) was higher at sites with lower mean annual discharge and lower annual flow variation, but increased slightly in response to higher daily flows. Predictions at validation sites were generally accurate, albeit with substantial site-to-site variation. Our results suggest that flow changes may have altered metabolic rates from conditions prior to water abstraction and dam construction. These findings will assist in managing flows for ecosystem function outcomes and support extrapolation from monitored sites to the broad scales required for evaluating catchment-scale outcomes of river management.

We report a rarely observed case of steady aseismic deformation in the context of a fold-and-thrust belt, with a well-documented structural and lithological background. We focus on a 12-km-long section across the foothills of southwestern Taiwan, where about 23 mm/yr of westward compression is observed. From west to east, the surface geological structures include an anticline, a thrust and a backthrust. We determine Holocene uplift rates based on fluvial terraces, invert the interseismic 3D velocity field using existing geodetic datasets, and build a geological cross-section to constrain the possible deep geometry for the structure responsible for the observed surface deformation. Geodetic vertical velocities and Holocene uplift rates show a similar pattern, with rates rapidly increasing eastward, then remaining relatively constant across the fold axis and thrust, and finally sharply decreasing across the backthrust, across which InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) observations suggest a velocity discontinuity. Our observations show that active deformation is occurring mainly aseismically and involves the anticline and backthrust. Our cross-section illustrates a 4–5 km deep wedge with a passive roof thrust corresponding to the backthrust, on the hanging wall of which the anticline is located. A classical fault-bend fold model with a slip rate of 21 ± 2 mm/yr can explain most of the observations, yet local misfit suggests a possible contribution to uplift from pure shear of clayey rocks in the anticline core. Based on published records from a deep well drilled across the fold core and backthrust, clay-rich lithology and elevated fluid content are likely to favor aseismic slip.

Abstract A reduction of energy service demand in all sectors is required to reach ambitious climate and other sustainability goals. A growing number of energy and climate scenarios does include detailed assumptions and quantified parameters for the reduction of energy service demand. However, the indicators and units used to measure the demand reduction potential of energy services differ from study to study and are thus difficult to compare. To help fill the existing research gap around the assumptions and quantification of sufficiency potentials, we analyse quantified European-focused sufficiency scenarios that are ambitious with respect to energy demand reduction. We propose twelve main service level indicators for comparison and create a database for the industry, transport, building and food sectors which includes values for these indicators from all identified scenarios. Achieving a common understanding of such indicators in the research community and more transparency in published scenario assumptions, input and output parameters, would improve comparability and streamline data research efforts. The resulting final energy demand in European sufficiency scenarios varies between 37 and 65 GJ/capita/year, which corresponds to reductions of −55 percent and −26 percent, respectively, by the target year (2040/2045/2050), averaging −46 percent. In European sufficiency scenarios, values for energy service demand in all sectors differ significantly, except for average distance travelled per person. The highest assumed reduction can be found for food indicators with an average 60 percent reduction compared to historic values. A comparison with published values for decent living standards shows that assumed values in European sufficiency scenarios are significantly higher. The analysed European sufficiency scenarios in this paper provide a different perspective on future values for energy service demand indicators than decent living standard approaches. The combination of those perspectives can inform discussions on a sustainable consumption space that climate policy is aiming for.