Remote Sensing Solutions (Germany)

Urban trees have proven an effective adaptation and mitigation strategy to attenuate the negative consequences of ongoing urbanization and climate change. However, area-wide data on trees in cities is still largely missing. Furthermore, ecosystem services of urban trees have only been quantified at the individual tree level for few selected trees within the urban forest to date. This study presents an integrative approach based on remote sensing for detection and characterization of urban trees, which serves as input for the modeling of ecosystem services using the process-based tree growth model "CityTree". In addition, the remote sensing-based parameter setting is compared to in-situ measurements to assess the plausibility of the ecosystem services estimation. The results show that tree dimensions from remote sensing generally agree well with in-situ measurements. Furthermore, the classification of tree genera based on multi-temporal very-high resolution (VHR) satellite data achieved good accuracies around 70%. Finally, this study demonstrates the effectiveness of remote sensing-based individual tree parameters for the estimation of ecosystem services, while the comparison with in-situ parameters confirmed the plausibility of the results.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the poorest countries in the world despite its wealth of natural resources. Mining, whether formal or informal, is the country’s most important economic sector. Against this background, we analyze in this study whether and, if so, to what extent mining regions have led to particularly dynamic settlement dynamics between 2016 and 2023 based on remote sensing data. As a primary source, we used the growth of settlements near mines mentioned in the book "Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives" in relation to growth rates at national level. We found that within the region of the cobalt belt in the south of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the increase in buildings which strongly correlates with the number of residents living in those places. Some example cities near mining activities yield an amount of buildings increased by over 150% and over 50% for the region of the cobalt belt. In comparison, we measure only 20 to 30% for the entire country (2016 to 2023). This indicates that mining has a large impact on the local environment, economy, and society.

The Mediterranean Region is a unique mosaic of different cultures and climates that shape its peoples, natural environment, and species diversity. However, rapid population growth, urbanisation and increased anthropogenic pressures are threatening water quantity, quality, and related ecosystem services. Known as a climate change hotspot, the Mediterranean region is increasingly experiencing intensifying droughts, diminished river flows, and drier soils making water management even more challenging. This situation calls for an urgent need for water management to shift from a mono-sectoral water management approach based on trade-offs, to more balanced multisectoral management that considers the requirement of all stakeholders. This means that sustainable water management requires ensuring that water is stored and shared fairly across all sectors at the basin scale. The research project OurMED (https://www.ourmed.eu/) is part of the Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area (PRIMA) Programme supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 2222. The project was launched in June 2023 and will continue for three years with a grant of 4.4 million euros to develop a holistic water storage and distribution approach tightly integrated into ecosystem services at the river basin scale. OurMED builds on the multidisciplinary skills of 15 consortium Partners and comprises universities, NGOs, research centres and SMEs from ten countries with complementary expertise in hydrology, hydrogeology, agronomy, climate change, social sciences, remote sensing, digital twins, ecology, and environmental sciences, among others, making it a truly interdisciplinary project. OurMED includes eight distinct demo sites, representing diverse water-related ecosystem properties of the Mediterranean landscape. These include the catchment areas of Bode (Germany), Agia (Crete, Greece), Konya (Turkey), Mujib (Jordan), Medjerda (Tunisia), Sebou (Morocco), Arborea (Sardinia, Italy), and Júcar (Spain). The Mediterranean basin, as a whole, is considered as an additional regional demo site to ensure replicability and reproducibility of proposed solutions at larger scales.  OurMED vision combines not only technologically-advanced monitoring, smart modelling and optimization capabilities, but also provides data fusion and integrated digital twin technologies to make optimized solutions readily available for decision making. OurMED concept and its implementation to the different demo sites will be presented and discussed.

We present a new wide-field 10.75 x 10.75 arcmin^2 (~11x11 kpc^2), high-resolution (theta = 3.6" ~ 60 pc) NOEMA CO(1-0) survey of the very nearby (d=3.45 Mpc) spiral galaxy IC 342. The survey spans out to about 1.5 effective radii and covers most of the region where molecular gas dominates the cold interstellar medium. We resolved the CO emission into >600 individual giant molecular clouds and associations. We assessed their properties and found that overall the clouds show approximate virial balance, with typical virial parameters of alpha_vir=1-2. The typical surface density and line width of molecular gas increase from the inter-arm region to the arm and bar region, and they reach their highest values in the inner kiloparsec of the galaxy (median Sigma_mol~80, 140, 160, and 1100 M_sun/pc^2, sigma_CO~6.6, 7.6, 9.7, and 18.4 km/s for inter-arm, arm, bar, and center clouds, respectively). Clouds in the central part of the galaxy show an enhanced line width relative to their surface densities and evidence of additional sources of dynamical broadening. All of these results agree well with studies of clouds in more distant galaxies at a similar physical resolution. Leveraging our measurements to estimate the density and gravitational free-fall time at 90 pc resolution, averaged on 1.5 kpc hexagonal apertures, we estimate a typical star formation efficiency per free-fall time of 0.45% with a 16-84% variation of 0.33-0.71% among such 1.5 kpc regions. We speculate that bar-driven gas inflow could explain the large gas concentration in the central kiloparsec and the buildup of the massive nuclear star cluster. This wide-area CO map of the closest face-on massive spiral galaxy demonstrates the current mapping power of NOEMA and has many potential applications. The data and products are publicly available.

<strong class="journal-contentHeaderColor">Abstract.</strong> The global number of vulnerable citizens in areas of landslide risk is expected to increase due to the twin forces of climate change and growing urbanization. Self-constructed or informal settlements are, due to shortage of urban land, frequently built in hazardous terrain such as landslide-prone slopes. They are characterized by high dynamics of growth, simple construction methods, strong social dynamics, and are exposed to unsteady political approaches. Landslide Early Warning Systems (LEWS) can contribute to decrease their vulnerability, but precise, affordable and culturally integrated LEWS need to be further developed. In this paper, we present a four-year living lab research project that aimed to design, implement, and evaluate a LEWS in the neighborhood of Bello Oriente, located in the urban-rural border of Medell&iacute;n, Colombia. Its research team is composed of landscape architects, geo-engineers, remote sensing and geo-informatic experts. The research team collaborated with a multitude of stakeholders: civil society, private enterprises, non-governmental agencies and various branches of government. A prototypical LEWS has been designed, implemented and handed over to the government. It has entered a test and calibration phase. First findings indicate that the integrative development of technical aspects of a LEWS in informal settlements can be challenging, but manageable; whereas, the social and political support can vary and be beyond the control of the designer. It can be concluded that a resilient LEWS for informal settlements has to achieve sufficient social and technical redundancy to maintain basic functionality even in a reduced support scenario.

Abstract Using the iOTarg genetic screening platform, salt-inducible kinase 3 (SIK3), a serine/threonine kinase of the AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) family was recently identified as a novel cell signaling modulator in cancer biology. OMX-0407, an orally available, single-digit nanomolar inhibitor of SIK3 was shown to inhibit tumor growth in a distinct panel of tumor models in vitro as well as in vivo by decreasing downstream pro-survival signaling of SIK3, enhancing caspase-mediated apoptosis and repolarizing the tumor microenvironment by decreasing regulatory T cells. In a comprehensive viability screening, more than 200 murine and human cancer cell lines and patient derived tumor models of different indications were used to identify a distinct subset of cancers highly sensitive towards OMX-0407. Representative for these tumors, OMX-0407 demonstrated dose-dependent anti-tumor efficacy in the renal cell carcinoma model RENCA, the squamous non-small cell lung cancer model (sqNSCLC) KLN205 and the murine colorectal tumor model MC38. With significantly prolonged overall survival of more than 60% tumor growth inhibition in all tumor models, OMX-0407 demonstrated equivalent or superior efficacy compared to anti-PD-1 monotherapy. In addition, OMX-0407 enhances the therapeutic potential of the standard of care chemotherapy in a broad range of human cancer cells and murine tumor models of sqNSCLC. Using comprehensive transcriptomics and proteomics analyses the selective activity profile of OMX-0407 on individual cancer cell lines and PDX models was used to identify and validate a predictive biomarker signature. With this gene signature, 84% of the selected cancer cells lines are correctly classified and would benefit from OMX-0407 therapy. The predictive biomarker will be evaluated in the clinical Phase I trial of OMX-0407 scheduled to start enrollment shortly. In summary, OMX-0407, a first-in-class oral SIK3 inhibitor, demonstrates potent monotherapy efficacy in tumor indications with high unmet medical need equal or superior to anti-PD-1 checkpoint blockade. By screening sensitive and non-sensitive tumor cell lines and PDX models, we identified a response-prediction biomarker signature. In upcoming clinical studies, this predictive biomarker signature will be evaluated for it’s potential to enrich for patients highly responsive to OMX-0407 therapy. Citation Format: Ilona-Petra Maser, Sonja Lacher, Vincent Piras, Barbara Kracher, Kai Zanziger, Murray Yule, Hannes Loferer, Stefan Bissinger. Development of a predictive biomarker signature for the highly potent SIK3 inhibitor OMX-0407 [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023; Part 1 (Regular and Invited Abstracts); 2023 Apr 14-19; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(7_Suppl):Abstract nr 953.

The DESIS spaceborne imaging spectrometer has been operational since 2018, providing high-quality hyperspectral data. We present an overview of the DESIS mission, the achievements in the five years of operation and plans for the future.