The development of geothermal exploration has benefited from the inclusion of exploration protocols based on geological Plays classically used in hydrocarbon exploration projects. Despite being a research topic in which many efforts have been devoted, it presents weaknesses when evaluating the role of the communities (the social dimension) during the exploration process. To address the lack of studies, a qualitative research has been carried out in Central America (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panamá) to determine the necessary factors to be considered in the social dimension within the geothermal exploration based in Plays.

     We have identified the social factors within each social dimension (demand, infrastructure, land access) and from this, a catalogue of the necessary activities required in the social dimension during the geothermal exploration process based on plays is proposed. The results of our survey will greatly contribute to the implementation of the Play-based exploration in geothermal projects because it reduces the risks associated in the initial phase of the exploration process and offers a step-by-step methodology that, when adapted to the needs of each country, can improve the efficiency of the current geothermal exploration protocols.

How to cite: Chocobar, J., Johst, B., Bracke, R., and Saenger, E. H.: Identification of the socio-technical factors within geothermal exploration based on Plays with examples from Central America , EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8091, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8091, 2021.

Surface water resources on volcanic islands with moderate rainfall and relatively high permeability are usually scarce or non-existent. As such, life and local economies of these islands mostly relies on groundwater exploitation. It is therefore important to characterise the sustainability of volcanic aquifer systems. In short, an aquifer is deemed in equilibrium when the recharge rate equals or exceeds the exploitation rate. The Izaña area in Tenerife Island (Canary Islands, Spain) has been exploited since the 1900s via a series of ~30 horizontal drilling or water galleries coming from both flanks of the NE-Ridge. Since exploitation began, the water table has dropped continuously, in some area even more than 200 m. Since the 2000s, aquifer dynamics (compaction) have been observed using InSAR indicating a subsidence rate of up to 2 cm per year.

Here, we investigate a suite of rock samples collected. The samples were collected at several water galleries aiming to be representative of the aquifer materials from the Izaña area. We first characterise the basic physical properties of each samples (porosity, permeability, solid density) before quantifying the elastic parameters (Young’s modulus, Poisson ratio) and uniaxial strength of the lithologies collected. We also measure V_p under dry and wet conditions (i.e. different saturation levels) to assess whether water saturation can alter the velocity of P-waves passing through those rocks.

Preliminary results show that connected porosities range from 0.16 to 45%, conferring a wide range of mechanical response to increasing effective pressure, with strength ranging from 18 – 315 MPa and Young’s moduli ranging from 3 – 57 GPa. In a similar fashion, results for V_p measurements also exhibit a range of values (~1.5 – 4.5 km/s). These data show that materials present in the aquifer are extremely varied, suggesting that both fluid flow and observed deformation are likely to be controlled by the weakest, most porous lithologies.

These results will further be integrated with the lithostratigraphic record of the aquifer in order to model the mechanical response of the aquifer to changes in effective pressures, and specifically pore pressure reduction with water extraction. Additionally, chemical and textural analysis will provide insights on the evolution of the porous network at different alteration levels, here serving as a proxy for time at saturation in the aquifer. Finally, we aim to compare the experimental results from laboratory measurements to those of hydro-geophysical measurements that will be collected in the field starting in mid-2021.

How to cite: Lamur, A., De Angelis, S., Marrero, R., Lavallée, Y., and Gonzalez, P. J.: Quantifying the mechanical response of the Izaña area (Tenerife) to sustained groundwater withdrawal , EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-9905, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9905, 2021.

Chlorpyrifos is commoly used as an pesticide to control weeds and prevent nondesirable grow of algae, fungi and bacteria in many agricultural applications. Despite its highly negative effects on human health, environmental modeling of this kind of pesticide in the groundwater is not commonly done in real situations. Predicting the fate of pesticides released into the natural environment is necessary to anticipate and minimize adverse effects both at close and long distances from the contamination source. A number of models have been developed to predict the behavior, mobility, and persistence of pesticides. These models should account for key hydrological and agricultural processes, such as crop growth, pesticide application patterns, transformation processes and field management practices.

This work shows results obtained by the Pesticide Water Calculator (PWC) model to simulate the behavior of chlorpyrifos. PWC model is used as a standard pesticide simulation model in USA and in this work it has been used to  simulate the fate and transport of chlorpyrifos in the unsaturated zone of the aquifer. The model uses a whole set of parameters to solve a modified version of the mass transport equation considering the combined effect of advection, dispersion and reactive transport processes. PWC is used to estimate the daily concentrations of chlorpyrifos in the Buñol-Cheste aquifer in Valencia Region(Spain).

A whole set of simulation scenarios have been designed to perform a parameter sensitivity analysis. Results of the PWC model obtained in this study represents a crucial first step towards the development of a pesticide risk assessment in Valencia Region. Results show that numerical simulation is a valid tool for the analysis and prediction of the fate  and transport of pesticides in the groundwater.

How to cite: Pérez Indoval, R., Rodrigo-Ilarri, J., and Cassiraga, E.: Assessment of groundwater contamination by chlorpyrifos using the PWC model in Valencia Region (Spain), EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-9514, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9514, 2021.

Surface ozone pollution has been proven to impose significant damages on crops. However, the quantification of the damages was extensively derived from chamber experiments, which is not representative of actual results in farm fields due to the limitations of spatial scale, time window, etc. In this work, we attempt to empirically fill this gap using county-level data in the United States from 1980 to 2015. We explore ozone impacts on corn, soybeans, spring wheat, winter wheat, barley, cotton, peanuts, rice, sorghum, and sunflower. We also incorporate a variety of climate variables to investigate potential ozone-climate interactions. More importantly, we shed light on future yield consequences of ozone and climate change individually and jointly under a moderate warming scenario. Our findings suggest significant negative impacts of ozone exposure for eight of the ten crops we examined, excepting barley and winter wheat, which contradicts experimental results. The average annual damages were estimated at $6.03 billion (in 2015 U.S. dollar) from 1980 to 2015. We also find rising temperatures tend to worsen ozone damages while water supply would mitigate that. Finally, elevated ozone driven by future climate change would cause much smaller damages than the direct effects of climate change itself.

How to cite: Da, Y., Xu, Y., and McCarl, B.: Effects of ozone and climate on historical (1980-2015) crop yields in the United States: Implication for mid-21st century projection, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-399, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-399, 2021.

This work aims to identify means of analysing the gravimetric composition of solid waste retained in the fences of some operational units of the Insular sewage system in the municipality of Florianópolis, State of Santa Catarina, Brazil. Two sewage pumping stations (Beira-Mar Norte and Hospital Universitário-Trindade) units were chosen and the railing at the entrance to the sewage treatment station of the system (Insular). The following classes of solid waste were adopted: plastics, metals, styrofoam, civil construction material, dead animals, sanitary napkins, diapers, rags and cloths, organic matter, other or tailings. It is being identified the solid waste observed in greater quantities and in percentages in the sanitary sewage system, which may cause damage to the operational units. The intending action is to be able to propose to local government and the system operator, different ways to educate the population and try to prevent or reduce the appearance of these residues in the sewage systems.

How to cite: Bortolotto, N. L. and Poleto, C.: Gravimetric Analysis of Solid Waste from Sanitary Sewage Operating Units of the Insular System, Florianópolis, State of Santa Catarina, Brazil., EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-6668, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6668, 2021.

Radiological emergencies involving accidental or deliberate dispersion of alpha emitting radionuclides in the environment can cause significant damage to humans and societies in general. A detection system to measure large-scale contamination of these radionuclides is currently not available. In case of a contamination, the only option is to evacuate the population from the affected areas and then run diagnostics by hand due to the short range of alpha particles in air, exposing thus the emergency teams to considerable risk. Even then, the results of emergency field applications are notoriously ambiguous, time consuming and tedious due to the centimetre range of the alpha particles in air. A novel detection approach which is capable of remote detection of alpha-emitting radionuclides in the environment will be reported. This approach will assist the on-site incident management and will enable detection of contamination threats without contact—from safe distances—avoiding thus contamination of operators and equipment.

How to cite: Krasniqi, F.: Optical detection of alpha emitting radionuclides in the environment, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-1847, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-1847, 2021.

There is a strong positive correlation between thermal comfort quality experienced inside a building and its energy efficiency. This is more obvious in case of mechanically ventilated spaces where the energy gains are directly related to the thermal load, as compared to free running or naturally ventilated spaces. Current state of arts assess the energy efficiency of building envelops in terms of the cumulative thermal load in the operating phase of the building that are catered by mechanical ventilations. Our study aims at addressing this gap of research in assessing the thermal comfort quality of naturally ventilated residential living spaces. Our study is designed in a warm-humid climate setting and in the context of affordable mass housing in the developing world where mechanical ventilation is unaffordable or affordable only for a definite period of the day and during peak summer seasons; such buildings are said to be operating in temporal mixed mode.

Affordable mass housing constitutes 95% housing demand in the residential sector in India. Various alternative materials and composite roofing and walling envelops have been envisioned in the past decade for such constructions, however, their effectiveness in terms of comfort quality has not been assessed for naturally ventilated envelops. Our study introduces a model to assess the thermal performance of naturally ventilated bedrooms constructed with alternate building envelop configurations. We attempt to review  and compare alternative walling technologies and the currently emerging mass housing construction systems in India with the base case housing envelop constructions commonly in practice in India that use ordinary burnt clay brick walls and reinforced concrete roofs. We compare the thermal comfort purveyed in the indoor bedroom spaces using the adaptive thermal comfort model in EN15251 as thermal neutrality temperature. We assess and compare alternative envelop performance using two measuring thermal comfort indices suited for naturally ventilated scenarios - the discomfort hours index and the cooling indoor degree hours index. Discomfort hours measures the number of hours of discomfort experienced during the summer solstice and spring equinox months whereas the cooling indoor degree hours measures the cumulative average temperature elevation from the comfort temperature in the hours marked as discomfort hours. In our study, light gauge steel framed structure with foam concrete filling records the minimum number of discomfort hours, however purveys maximum cooling indoor degree hours.

The above two comfort indices have not been compared in the past to assess the thermal comfort quality in naturally ventilated or temporal mixed mode buildings. Our study frames a thermal comfort assessment model for naturally ventilated envelops and thereby offers a paradigm shift from life cycle cooling load minimization models which are appropriate for mechanically conditioned spaces. Our observations are also important for mass housing envelop selection and in the context of the current policy frameworks in the developing world, aimed at minimizing the projected demand for residential space cooling and future energy footprints in the housing sector.

How to cite: Sen, R., Bhattacharya, S. P., and Chattopadhyay, S.: Comfort-energy nexus in naturally ventilated affordable mass housing with alternative constructions in the developing world, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8003, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8003, 2021.

The Pan-European gas-hydrate relate GIS database of GARAH project has allowed assessing the susceptibility of seafloor areas affected by hydrate dissociation. This study has been applied as a first step for the hydrate related risk assessment along the European continental margins. Several factors and variables have been taken into account. They have been defined by their relationship with the presence of hydrates below seafloor and weighted depending on the confidence of finding hydrates in this site. The maximum weight (or confidence) has been given to the recovered samples of gas hydrates or hydrate-dissociation evidences such as degassing or liquation structures observed in gravity cores. Seismic indicators of the presence of gas hydrate or hydrocarbon seabed fluid flow such as BSR, blanking acoustic, amplitude anomalies or the presence of geological structures of seabed fluid flow in the neighbouring of the GHSZ have been weighted with a lower value. The theoretical gas hydrate stability zone (GHSZ) for a standard composition for biogenic gas has been taken into account as another control factor and constrain feature. Seafloor areas out of the theoretical GSHZ have been excluded as potential likelihood to be affected by hydrate dissociation processes. The base of GHSZ has been classified as a critical area for these dissociation processes.

The proposed methodology analyses the geological hazard by means of the susceptibility assessment, defined by the likelihood of occurrence of hydrate dissociation, collapses, crater-like depressions or submarine landslides over seafloor. The baseline scenario is that gas hydrate occurrence is only possible in seafloor areas where pressure (bathymetry) and seafloor temperature conditions are inside the theoretical GHSZ. Inside GHSZ, the occurrence of gas hydrate is directly related to the presence of its evidences (direct samples of hydrates) or indicators (eg. pore water and velocity anomalies, BSR, gas chimneys, among others), as well as the occurrence of hydrocarbon fluid flow structures inside GHSZ. Finally, the likelihood of the seafloor to be affect gas hydrate dissociation processes will be major at the base of the GHSZ and in the neighbouring of the gas hydrate evidences and indicators. In order to proof this initial hypothesis, a susceptibility assessment has been carried out throughout map algebra in a GIS environment from a density map of evidences and indicators and the Pan-European map of the GHSZ over seafloor. Specifically, it has been conceived as a segmentation in three levels by quantiles resulting of the addition of the density map of evidences and indicators and the weighted map of the GHSZ over seafloor.

Acknowledgment

GARAH project. GeoERA - GeoE.171.002

How to cite: León, R., Rochelle, C., Burnol, A., Giménez- Moreno, C. J., Nielsen, T., Hopper, J., Reguera, I., Stewart, M., Llorente, M., Mata, P., and Cervel, S.: Susceptibility assessment of gas hydrate dissociation occurrence along European continental margins and adjacent areas. GARAH project (GeoERA), EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-6407, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6407, 2021.

A Geological Analysis and Resource Assessment of selected Hydrocarbon Systems (GARAH) is carried out as part of the overarching GeoERA project. Here, we report results on the first public 3D basin and petroleum system model developed in a cross-border area of the Dutch, Danish and German North Sea Central Graben. This pilot study reconstructs the thermal history, maturity and petroleum generation of potential Lower, Middle and Upper Jurassic source rocks and assesses potential unconventional resources in a first phase. The 3D pilot study incorporates new aggregated and combined layers of the three countries. Results of the study feed back into the 3DGEO-EU project of GeoERA.

Eight key horizons covering the whole German Central Graben and parts of the Dutch and Danish North Sea Central Graben were selected for building the stratigraphic and geological framework of the 3D basin and petroleum system model. The model includes depth and thickness maps of important stratigraphic units as well as the main salt structures. Petrophysical parameters, generalized facies information and organic geochemical data from well reports are assigned to the different key geological layers. Further, the model is calibrated with temperature and maturity data from selected offshore wells as well as from publications. The time span from the Late Permian to the Present is represented by the model, including the most important erosional phases related to large-scale tectonic events during the Late Jurassic to Late Cretaceous. Additionally, salt movement through time expressed as diapirs and pillows is considered within the 3D basin and petroleum system model. Simulations depict that unconventional petroleum resources (oil and natural gas) are present in varying amounts in the source rocks across all three countries.

This is a part of an ongoing EU Horizon 2020 GeoERA project (The GARAH, H2020 grant #731166 lead by GEUS).

How to cite: Lutz, R., Nelskamp, S., Mathiesen, A., Schovsbo, N. H., Ladage, S., and Britze, P.: 3D basin and petroleum system modelling in the North Sea Central Graben - a Dutch, German, Danish cross-border study, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7262, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7262, 2021.

Faults are prominent features in the subsurface that define the geological development and distribution of geological formations and resources therein. Faults can define resources themselves (e.g. minerals, thermal conduits), but more often they can pose a hazard to subsurface drilling, injection and extraction activities . Well-known examples are Basel – Switzerland (geothermal stimulation), Oklahoma – US (waste water injection) and Groningen – The Netherlands (conventional hydrocarbon extraction).

Despite that faults are a typical product of geological mapping, there was, until now, no consistent insight in these structures in a pan-European context. There are some examples focusing on the publication of seismogenic faults (e.g. GEM Global Active Faults Database, SHARE  European Database of Seismogenic Faults, USGS Quaternary faults database), yet deeply buried faults are under-represented here. With the European fault database, the GeoERA-HIKE project addresses the following objectives: i) develop a consistent and uniform repository for fault data and characteristics across Europe, ii) Implement an associated tectonic vocabulary which provides a framework for future interpretation, modelling and application of fault data, and iii) assess the applicability of fault data in case studies.

The current fault database is envisioned to be a major stepping stone for a sustained and uniform development and dissemination of tectonic data and knowledge which will be applicable to a broad spectrum of subsurface research challenges. The database contains data from Geological Survey Organizations and partners in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Iceland, Denmark, Poland, Lithuania, Italy, France, Ukraine, Portugal, Slovenia, Albania and various countries in the Pannonian Basin Area.

The GeoERA-HIKE project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under agreement No. 731166

How to cite: Van Gessel, S., van Ede, R., Doornenbal, H., ten Veen, J., and Hintersberger, E. and the HIKE Team: A European Fault Database as a stepping stone towards improved subsurface evaluation of hazards and resources, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16232, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16232, 2021.

Sustainable evolution of groundwater quantity and quality is essential for sustainable development and protection of society and nature, globally, as acknowledged in the UN sustainable development goals and the European Green Deal. Too much? – too little? – and/or too polluted? are important questions to pose and answer in a changing climate with increasing pressures on water resources, severe loss of biodiversity, and a projected increase in extreme events resulting in an increasing risk of floods, droughts, landslides and land subsidence.   

Easy access to digital and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and reusable) data on groundwater quantity and quality is imperative for informed decision making and efficient climate change mitigation and adaptation to which sustainable groundwater management will contribute. Here we briefly present selected highlights and digital data products from the four GeoERA groundwater projects developed for and made available on the digital subsurface information platform of the European geological survey organizations. The ambition is to develop the digital information platform, EGDI (the European Geological Data Infrastructure) as the leading information platform for sustainable and integrated management of subsurface resources in Europe and one of the leading platforms, globally.

How to cite: Hinsby, K., Gourcy, L., Broers, H. P., Højberg, A. L., Bianchi, M., and van der Keur, P.: Introducing digital information products of the four GeoERA groundwater projects for assessment and sustainable use of water resources and the subsurface in a changing climate, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-11944, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-11944, 2021.

Denitrification potential is an important parameter to know for adequate and efficient management and assessment of groundwater vulnerability and chemical status. Denitrification removes nitrate in groundwater, but the denitrification capacity is highly variable in space and time, and it may be used up with time. When linking pressure and impact the effect of partial or complete denitrification and denitrification capacity should be taken into account. In some areas, denitrification is seen as an advantage, allowing higher N release below soil without leading to a decrease of the groundwater quality and eventually concentrations in groundwater higher than the WFD and DWD threshold values, which EU member states have to establish to protect drinking water and groundwater dependent terrestrial and associated aquatic ecosystems.    

Within the GEOERA HOVER project, the aim was to assess the spatial extent and importance of denitrification. The studied cases permitted at a first step to highlight the heterogeneities of the approaches due to the variability of information obtained i.e. the likelihood of denitrification, depth and thickness of redox transition zone, complete denitrification status. The parameters used to define the denitrification vary also from one country to another based on a large set of redox sensitive ions (Eh, O₂, NO₃, NO₂, Fe, Mn, SO₄, CH₄, δ¹⁸O_-NO3 et δ¹⁵N-_NO3, H₂S or N₂). Some of these parameters can be accessed by standard methods in most laboratories, used for groundwater quality monitoring, while others require specialized analysis and interpretations.

Considering groundwater and hydrogeological data available in most of the EU countries, a simple method is proposed in order to classify the monitoring points into three classes: oxic, anoxic and mixed. After being tested in different well-known areas the method will be applied in various lithologies and hydrogeological contexts The proposed method will enable the development of European maps supporting groundwater quality management across Europe.

How to cite: Gourcy, L., Hinsby, K., Thorling, L., Pinson, S., Ascott, M., Broers, H.-P., Malcuit, E., and Christophi, C.: Towards a European denitrification concept for improved groundwater quality management and chemical status assessment, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-14289, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14289, 2021.

Work package 7 of the GeoERA HOVER project deals with groundwater vulnerability assessment to pollution of the shallow upper aquifer. We present vulnerability assessments across Europe applying the DRASTIC method in 11 pilot areas and the COP method for karst systems in 5 pilot areas. The presented assessments are carried out at multiple scales (between 1:1K and 1:250K), pilot areas sizes (catchment to national scale; 15 to 338 000 km²) and hydro-climatic contexts (ranging from extremely high and steady recharge to very low and seasonal recharge). The core item of this presentation is a detailed investigation and statistical assessment on respective data availability, data density and methodologies applied to retrieve input parameters for the assessment (e.g., groundwater recharge) and how this affects the final vulnerability assessments. We also focus on the definition (numerical ranges) of the individual vulnerability classes, which are valid across all pilots.

In an attempt to generate information summarizing affected aquifer volumes, a method based on a lumped index and 2D conceptual cross-sections is proposed. It was originally designed for sea-water intrusion assessments, and has been adapted and applied in some pilot areas to estimate aquifer volumes of each individual vulnerability class.

How to cite: Broda, S. and the HOVER WP7 Team: Multi-scale input data assessment for harmonized index-based aquifer vulnerability evaluations across Europe, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-14449, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14449, 2021.

Bulk mineralogy and geochemistry data of Fe-Mn crusts from seamounts of the Macaronesia region (Canary Islands and Madeira and Azores archipelagos) compiled for the MINDeSEA Database, have been analyzed using statistical tools and related with their location and sampling depth.
Results show that the predominant mineralogy is represented by hydrogenetic Fe-vernadite and goethite, with minor abundance of other Mn-oxides such as buserite, asbolane and todorokite in crusts influenced by early diagenesis. Bulk geochemistry is dominated by Fe and Mn (ranging from 7 to 29 wt. %) with low aluminum-silicate elements (10 wt. % in average) and with significant average contents of several strategic and critical metals like Co, Ni, V, Mo, Te and especially REYs (4700, 2300, 1000, 400, 50 and 2500 µg/g respectively).
Variation of REYs and energy critical element (Co, Mn and Te) contents as a function of water depth and mineralogy are clearly evident in this study. Geochemical and statistical studies (Pearson correlation and factorial analysis with Varimax) reveal that Fe-Mn crusts recovered at water depths just below the oxygen minimum zone (that in this area is located between 300 and 1000 m) at Tropic, Tore, Unicorn and Bimbache seamounts, show an enrichment of all REYs and especially LREEs (Ce is the most enriched element with up to 2900 µg/g). On the other hand, the crusts recollected from the deepest seamounts: Drago, Gaire and MTR (up to 4900 m water depth) show a slightly depletion in all the REYs, especially La and Ce (300 and 1800 µg/g in average respectively). A similar behavior can also be observed for the other energy critical elements where enrichment or depletion is clearly linked to water depth. Additionally, there is a correlation of REY abundance with the mineralogy.  High-resolution studies show that REY are concentrated up to an order of magnitude lower in the diagenetic Mn oxide minerals than in the hydrogenetic phases, possibly due to their high growth rates that don’t allow the concentration of these elements. This work is part of the investigation related to the metallogenetic models for marine minerals developed in the Geo-ERA MINDeSEA¹ European project.

[1] This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 731166

How to cite: Marino, E., González, F. J., Medialdea, T., Somoza, L., Ferreira, P., Kuhn, T., Magalhaes, V., and Lobato, A.: REY contents in Fe-Mn crusts in Macaronesia: evidence of variation with depth and mineralogy, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15519, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15519, 2021.

Marine ferromanganese crusts are metal-rich chemical sediments showing an increasing economic interest as potential mineral resources for strategic and critical metals. Formation of Fe-Mn crusts is linked to a series of different factors that favor or limit their genesis on the seabed. The objective of this work is the search of areas for potential formation of these deposits, using data obtained in the Canary Islands Seamount Province. The study has been carried out based on multi-criteria analysis, using a Geographic Information System (ArcGis 10.5, Spatial Analysis and Statistical tools). For this purpose, it has been created a cartographic model, which considers data related to depth, seabed substrate nature and age, slope and exposure to marine bottom currents. This model has been applied to non-sampled areas, contrasting them with data derived from the analysis of samples taken in different oceanographic surveys, in order to establish the correct conclusions. This work has been carried out using bathymetric and geological data shared by the Geological Survey of Spain (IGME) with the MINDeSEA [1] and EMODnet-Geology [2] European projects.

[1] This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 731166.

[2] EMODNET-Geology project (EASME/EMFF/2018/1.3.1.8-Lot 1/SI2.811048).

How to cite: Lobato, A., Marino, E., González, J., Medialdea, T., and Somoza, L.: Predicting potential areas for the formation of Co-rich ferromanganese crusts in the Canary Islands Seamount Province using multi-criteria GIS analysis, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15563, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15563, 2021.

The ROBOMINERS (Resilient Bio-inspired Modular Robotic Miner) project aims at developing new methods and technologies (prototype automation and robotics technology) to locate and exploit underground mineral deposits and is funded under the European Union’s Research and Innovation programme Horizon 2020. The project targets mineral deposits that are generally considered “non-economical” either because they are not accessible anymore for conventional mining techniques, or they have been previously explored but exploitation was considered uneconomic due to the small size of the deposits or the difficulty to access them (abandoned, small, ultra-depth deposits).

The European Federation of Geologists (EFG) is part of the Robominers consortium and its role includes the collection of publicly available data at a national level on mineral deposits which are potential targets on the developed mining technology. The Association of Greek Geologists (AGG) is participating as an EFG Linked Third Party in the project aiming, among others, at the creation of a European database of potentially suitable ore deposits for the utilization of the Robominers technology.

The creation of an ore deposits’ European database is a crucial procedure for the best possible design of exploration and exploitation applying the Robominers innovative approach. The AGG has contributed in the building of a database at a national level (for Greece), of the major and most important mineral deposits, according to the project requirements. A number of ore deposits in which Robominers advanced technology may provide a unique solution to mineral extraction, include porphyry and epithermal deposits and especially vein-like types, but volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS-type) and lense-like or layered orthomagmatic deposits can also be of high importance. From the above mentioned ore deposits the most abundant in Greece are epithermal deposits, deposits in hydrothermal veins, porphyry copper, as well as chromites in ophiolite complexes. Regarding the spatial distribution vein-type or metasomatic deposits are located mostly in Northern Greece (Western Macedonia and Thrace regions) while significant variable-mineralization deposits are related with the Attico-Cycladic belt volcanism (mainly Lavrion, Evia, and islands in the Aegean Sea). Finally, PGE bearing chromite deposits and bauxite deposits, located mainly in Central Greece, may also be significant for the project.

The establishment of a joined European Robominers database is of great significance for the progress of the project since it will provide essential information on key outputs such as the deposit type and commodities, the host rock, and the spatial distribution of the project’s targeted ore deposits and will provide valuable knowledge regarding the future planning of the exploration and exploitation from the developed Robominers innovative technology approach.

Dr Eleni Koutsopoulou

Coordinator of the project

On Behalf of the:

Association of Greek Geologists

Didotou 26,10680, Athens, Greece

VAT ID: EL-999600130

How to cite: Koutsopoulou, E., Servou, A., and Aggelopoulos, G.: The ROBOMINERS project: a promising tool for the re-evaluation of “non-economical” deposits. Aiming at the development of a joined European database of potentially suitable ore deposits for the utilization of the Robominers technology., EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-13158, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13158, 2021.

Throughout Europe, there are large industrial and cultural landscapes originating from the exploitation of ornamental stone through history. Such landscapes may contain a range of potential values; economic, such as future resources and reserves, and non-economic, such as cultural and industrial heritage, areas for recreation and tourism, and geological heritage. Based on case studies in two areas, we will explore different paths and methods for assessing values of ornamental stone resources.

The Iddefjord granite, SE Norway, has been exploited since the middle ages, but the main phase came with the industrial revolution. During the last half of the 19th Century, the granite industry here grew to a considerable size, culminating around the turn of the century when more than 5000 people worked in the quarries, producing paving and building stone. At present time, only one active natural stone quarry remains, but the quality of the granite should encourage further future developments. The study summarizes the geology and evolution of quarrying and quarry technology and provides a characterization of the quarry landscape: its resources that can provide economic values for the future and the anthropogenic morphology of the landscape created by exploitation through history. From the characterization, we propose a scheme for value assessment of the Iddefjord natural stone resource. In particular, we focus the non-economic values. For instance, the importance of the Iddefjord granite as a historic marker in world architecture may provide significant arguments for future designation of exploitation areas.

The Larvik monzonite (larvikite) in SE Norway is composed of varieties of monzonite with a distinct play of colour (chatoyancy), making the stone highly attractive in the global markets. Although use of larvikite goes back to the medieval period, industrial production started in the Late 19^th Century and is still large scaled and increasing. This case study investigates the future resources, applying 3D modelling and UNFC. In addition, secondary value chains from the primary ornamental stone production are evaluated.

These case studies are parts of the Eurolithos and Mintel4EU Projects within the GeoEra umbrella, aimed at harmonizing and visualizing information about natural stone resources in Europe.

How to cite: Heldal, T. and Aasly, K. A.: Value assessment of ornamental stone resources, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-14730, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14730, 2021.

The well-being of society and the interdependencies of national economies depend heavily on reliably functioning supply chains as the COVID-19 pandemic proved this long-known statement in everyone's daily life. None of the supply chains can do without the mostly mineral raw materials. The United Nations sees raw materials as the key component for achieving all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The European Green Deal (COM(2019) 640 final) of the European Union as well as the Paris Agreement cannot be achieved without raw materials. The IPR Global Resources Outlook 2019 [1] foresees an increasing demand for raw materials worldwide regardless of all efforts to further close the raw material cycles. At the same time, the demand for responsible procurement under ethically, socially and ecologically sound conditions is becoming more and more stringent.

The four GeoERA Raw Materials projects EuroLITHOS, FRAME, MINDeSEA and Mintell4EU share expertise, information and focus on European on-shore and off-shore resources as a first step to take our share of responsibility to ensure responsible sourcing from domestic sources [2]. It is among the tasks of the GeoERA raw material projects to know and evaluate in a comparable way the raw materials of the geology under our feet and to visualize these results in accessible databases, maps and publications.

Results will be presented and discussed on the example of selected raw materials that are particularly important for the energy transition to make Europe climate-neutral by 2050.

How to cite: Wittenberg, A., de Oliveira, D. P. S., González Sanz, F. J., Flindt Jørgensen, L., and Held, T.: GeoERA´s Contribution Towards Resilience in Europe’s Raw Materials Supply Chains, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15047, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15047, 2021.

There are many initiatives to re-wet drained nature or former agricultural land. These young wetlands provide a natural habitat for a range of endangered species, while serving as a natural climate buffer by retaining water, regulating air temperature, and sequestering CO₂ from the atmosphere. However, wetlands may also emit CH₄, which has a global warming potential (GWP) of about 30. Thus, all carbon fluxes need to be quantified in order to assess if, from a climate perspective, CO₂ uptake outweighs CH₄ emission.

To assess the net effect of young wetlands on Greenhouse Gas exchange, we study the CO₂ and CH₄ fluxes of two recently rewetted areas near Groningen, the Netherlands. The fluxes are measured directly using the Eddy Covariance (EC) technique on a moveable station, alternating between the two sites. Meteorological observations are performed at these stations as well, along with other supportive measurements such as soil/water temperature. The alternating time gaps are filled by interpolation based on observed ecosystem responses. Footprint analysis provides insight into the role of various vegetation types inside these swamps. The resulting carbon budgets provide insight into GHG exchange over typically small temporal and spatial scales.

The study also examines the feasibility of these moveable stations, as they may reduce the relatively high research costs of EC measurements. The data from moveable stations is reliable if the data is regular, as the time gaps are filled by interpolation. At this stage, the timeseries is too short to draw any conclusions upon the reliability of the data. However, the moveable stations appear to be feasible from a practical point of view, as the station can be relocated relatively easy within the time span of a day.

The first results suggest both substantial CO₂ uptake and CH₄ emissions but a full year of data was not collected yet. Observed exchange compares well to similar studies previously performed.  

Ultimately, annual budgets of the carbon exchange response will be correlated to weather conditions but also to hydrological measures such as water levels. This should allow extrapolation of the data, which may serve as a basis for policy makers to manage the carbon balance when re-wetting nature to achieve net mitigation of greenhouse warming potential.

How to cite: Kruijt, B., Berghuis, H., Biermann, J., Jans, W., Franssen, W., Nijhof, E., Peltenburg, A., Lettink, R., Jacobs, C., Hutjes, R., and Veraart, J.: Greenhouse gas exchange of young rewetted swamp in northern Netherlands, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8483, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8483, 2021.

Although characteristics of the carbon balance and the organic carbon stock changes of arable lands have been the primary research focus of numerous studies, uncertainity is still a major factor in this area of research. Our aim is to determine the dynamics of carbon cycling in croplands in regards to a crop rotation consisting of different crop types and to clarify the factors driving the carbon fluxes between its main components.

A field-scale eddy covariance (EC) station was established in 2017 at a cropland site in Central Hungary in order to obtain the cropland’s annual net ecosystem exchange of CO₂ (NEE). Net ecosystem carbon budget (NECB) was calculated considering vertical and lateral C fluxes as well. Soil management is a conventional management with yearly deep ploughing and mineral fertilizer application.

During the three years of our experiment the crop rotation included winter wheat, winter rapeseed, sorghum and winter wheat. The largest net CO₂ uptake was observed during the sorghum season (from sowing to harvest, -309 g C m^-2 yr^-1). However, extreme autumnal drought resulted in the incomplete germination of rapeseed in 2018, which led to carbon loss (108 g C m^-2 yr^-1) during this vegetation period. Results show a significant difference between the two winter wheat seasons – sown in 2017 and 2019 – which can be explained by the differing precipitation of the two periods. Despite the strong CO₂ uptake of winter wheat and sorghum, NECB ranged between negligible C gain (-18.26 g C m^-2 year^-1, sorghum) to C losses of up to 108 g C m^-2 year^-1 (rapeseed). During three years the C loss was 420 g C m^-2 as C export through harvest and fallow periods counterbalanced the crops’ CO₂ uptake.

As a conclusion we can state this cropland could not sequester enough carbon to maintain the soil organic carbon pool and in order to reduce the risk of the depletion of soil carbon stock further efforts are needed in the field of soil management practices.

How to cite: De Luca, G., Balogh, J., Pintér, K., Fóti, S., Bouteldja, M., Malek, I., and Nagy, Z.: Soil carbon balance in Hungarian crop rotation systems, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-10977, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-10977, 2021.

Grasslands cover half of New Zealand’s land area, with much of it consisting of pastoral agriculture systems of varying intensity. Carbon fluxes from grazed pasture are thus a crucial part of the national carbon budget. We have used Biome-BGCMuSo v6 to model national CO₂ fluxes from grasslands, calibrated with eddy covariance measurements at grazed farms at various sites around the country. We discuss the challenges of scaling up site measurements to the national level and modelling the diversity of New Zealand's pastoral sector. Model outputs will subsequently be used as a prior estimate of CO₂ fluxes in an atmospheric inversion to obtain a total carbon budget for New Zealand as part of the CarbonWatch-NZ project.

How to cite: Keller, E., Graham, S., Hunt, J., Wall, A., Schipper, L., McMillan, A., Hidy, D., Barcza, Z., Bukosa, B., and Mikaloff-Fletcher, S.: Modelling carbon fluxes from New Zealand’s pastoral agriculture, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-3641, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-3641, 2021.

The quantification of the net carbon flux from land use and land cover changes (f_LULCC) is essential to understand the global carbon cycle, and consequently, to support climate change mitigation. However, large-scale f_LULCC is not directly measurable, and can only be inferred by models, such as semi-empirical bookkeeping models, and process-based dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs). By definition, f_LULCC estimates between these two model types are not directly comparable. For example, transient DGVM-based f_LULCC of the annual global carbon budget includes the so-called Loss of Additional Sink Capacity (LASC). The latter accounts for environmental impacts on the land carbon storage capacities of managed land compared to potential vegetation which is not included in bookkeeping models. Additionally, estimates of transient DGVM-based f_LULCC differ from bookkeeping model estimates, since they depend on arbitrarily chosen simulation time periods and the timing of land use and land cover changes within the historic period (which includes different accumulation periods for legacy effects). However, DGVMs enable a f_LULCC approximation independent of the timing of land use and land cover changes and their legacy effects by simulations run under constant pre-industrial or present-day environmental forcings.

In this study, we analyze these different DGVM-derived f_LULCC definitions, under transiently changing environmental conditions and fixed pre-industrial and fixed present-day conditions, within 18 regions for twelve DGVMs and quantify their differences as well as climate- and CO₂-induced components. The multi model mean under transient conditions reveals a global f_LULCC of 2.0±0.6 PgC yr^-1 for 2009-2018, with ~40% stemming from the LASC (0.8±0.3 PgC yr^-1). Within the industrial period (1850 onward), cumulative f_LULCC reached 189±56 PgC with 40±15 PgC from the LASC.

Regional hotspots of high LASC values exist in the USA, China, Brazil, Equatorial Africa and Southeast Asia, which we mainly relate to deforestation for cropland. Distinct negative LASC estimates were observed in Europe (early reforestation) and from 2000 onward in the Ukraine (recultivation of post-Soviet abandoned agricultural land). Negative LASC estimates indicate that fLULCC estimates in these regions are lower in transient DGVM simulations compared to bookkeeping-approaches. By unraveling the spatio-temporal variability of the different DGVM-derived f_LULCC estimates, our study calls for a harmonized attribution of model-derived f_LULCC. We propose an approach that bridges bookkeeping and DGVM approaches for f_LULCC estimation by adopting a mean DGVM-ensemble LASC for a defined reference period.

How to cite: Obermeier, W. and the LASC task-force: Spatio-temporal comparison of different approaches to derive land use and land cover change emissions by models, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-9837, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9837, 2021.

The aim of this work was to make improved estimates of land-use change in the UK, using multiple sources of data. We applied a method for estimating land-use change using a Bayesian data assimilation approach. This allows us to constrain estimates of gross land-use change with national-scale census data, whilst retaining the detailed information available from several other sources. We produced a time series of maps describing our best estimate of land-use change given the available data, as well as the full posterior distribution of this space-time data cube. This quantifies the joint probability distribution of the parameters, and properly propagates the uncertainty from input data to final output. The output data has been summarised in the form of land-use vectors. The results show that we can provide improved estimates of past land-use change using this method. The main advantage of the approach is that it provides a coherent, generalised framework for combining multiple disparate sources of data, and adding further sources of data in future is straightforward.

How to cite: Levy, P. E.: A Bayesian data assimilation approach to estimating land-use change, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15126, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15126, 2021.

Changes in carbon pools, land use and land-use change can be monitored based on field inventoried sampling units without using maps or remote sensing products. One way is to use a sampling framework. The framework can be based on a map, but the map does not necessarily need to be used for improving the estimates. The map can consist of a Member state’s total land and freshwater area. The sampling units can be distributed using a systematic grid with randomized location in the framework. A permanent design (the same sample units are re-inventoried in a periodic cycle) has been proven efficient when estimating change. Stratification into assumed homogenous strata is another way to further improve the accuracy of estimates. The distribution of sampling units can be spatially explicit (geo-referenced) in the sense that their locations are identified using GPS. This, combined with the permanent design, makes it possible to estimate both gross and net land use transfers in order to provide a land use matrix. The area-based sampling combined with the Horvitz and Thompson-estimator, makes a sampling unit representative of a certain area and all sample units together comprise the total land and freshwater area. This design makes it possible to match changes in carbon pools to land use and land-use change and to trace them back in time. 

We present a monitoring design based on the Swedish NFI and adapted to reporting under the UNFCCC/KP frameworks or the EU-regulation. Pros and cons are discussed and we compare with alternative designs (combining ground truth with remote sensing). Finally, we assess the accuracy of estimates of selected variables (sample and model errors).

How to cite: Petersson, H., Breidenbach, J., Ellison, D., Lundblad, M., and Appiah Mensah, A.: Monitoring changes in carbon pools matched to land use and land-use change based on field sampling measurements, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16400, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16400, 2021.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and transition to a new forest inventory system, Russia has reported (FAO, 2014) almost no changes in growing stock (+1.8%) and biomass (+0.6%). Yet remote sensing products indicate increased vegetation productivity (Guay et al., 2014), tree cover (Song et al., 2018) and above-ground biomass (Liu et al., 2015). Here, we challenge the official national statistics with a combination of recent National Forest Inventory and remote sensing data products to provide an alternative estimate of the growing stock of Russian forests and assess the relative changes in the post-Soviet era. Our estimate for the year 2014 is 118.29±1.3 10⁹ m³, which is 48% higher than the official value reported for the same year in the State Forest Register. The difference is explained by increased biomass density in forested areas (+39%) and larger forest area estimates (+9%). Using the last Soviet Union report (1988) as a reference, Russian forests have accumulated 1163×10⁶ m³ yr^-1 of growing stock between 1988–2014, which compensates for forest growing stock losses in tropical countries (FAO FRA, 2015). Our estimate of the growing stock of managed forests is 94.2 10⁹ m³, which corresponds to sequestration of 354 Tg C yr^-1 in live biomass over 1988–2014, or 47% higher than reported in the National Greenhouse Gases Inventory (National Inventory Report, 2020).

Acknowledgement: The research plots data collection was performed within the framework of the state assignment of the Center for Forest Ecology and Productivity of the Russian Academy of Sciences (no. АААА-А18-118052590019-7), and the ground data pre-processing were financially supported by the Russian Science Foundation (project no. 19-77-30015).

How to cite: Schepaschenko, D., Moltchanova, E., Fedorov, S., Karminov, V., Ontikov, P., Santoro, M., See, L., Kositsyn, V., Shvidenko, A., Romanovskaya, A., Korotkov, V., Bartalev, S., Fritz, S., Shchepashchenko, M., and Kraxner, F.: New estimate of growing stock volume and carbon sequestration of Russian forests based on national forest inventory and remote sensing data, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-11217, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-11217, 2021.

In a recent Nature article, the satellite-based Global Forest Change (GFC) map was used to estimate the yearly harvest area in each of the EU26-states over the period 2004 to 2018 (Ceccherini et al. 2020). Finland and Sweden were identified as the countries with the largest harvest increases and the biggest effect on the EU’s climate policy strategy. Here, we employ more than 45,000 field observations from the Finnish and Swedish national forest inventories as reference observations to analyze the accuracy of GFC data. We find that harvested area increases only marginally, if at all, after 2015. What did increase abruptly after 2015, however, was GFC’s sensitivity to detect harvested areas and thinnings.

The results of the Nature article are therefore a consequence of an inconsistent time series in GFC due to a change in the mapping algorithm or the sensor system and are thus both incorrect and misleading. The article is thus a good example for how wrong results based on satellite data can be, if no adequate estimators utilizing reference data are used.

References

Ceccherini, G. et al. Abrupt increase in harvested forest area over Europe after 2015. Nature 583, 72-77 (2020).

How to cite: Breidenbach, J., Ellison, D., Petersson, H., Korhonen, K., Henttonen, H., Wallerman, J., Fridman, J., Gobakken, T., Astrup, R., and Næsset, E.: No “Abrupt increase in harvested forest area over Europe after 2015” – How the misuse of a satellite-based map led to completely wrong conclusions, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-13243, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13243, 2021.

How to cite: Ellison, D., Breidenbach, J., Petersson, H., Korhonen, K. T., Henttonen, H., Wallerman, J., Fridman, J., Mensah, A. A., Gobakken, T., and Naesset, E.: Reversing the European Trend Toward a Declining Land Carbon Sink?, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16261, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16261, 2021.

Long-standing debates over the benefits of forest conservation vs. those of substitution and forest resource use continue to occupy attention in Europe and beyond. Moreover, many argue the carbon sequestration benefits of standing forest are greater than those from forest resource use and replanting. To study this question, we generate long-term scenario analyses based on different forest management strategies in Sweden, in particular comparing increasing forest use and increasing land set-asides over 100, 200 and 500 year cycles. We find that the cost of increasing land set-asides is reflected in a significant loss of the carbon benefits created by forest use (substitution and carbon sequestration). We explain this outcome through the loss of additional growth that occurs as forest in land set-asides matures and eventually reaches a steady state. For the Swedish forest, these costs are significant and may amount to the loss (lost opportunity) of annually providing and additional -14 MtCO2e in net annual removals. The EU-based LULUCF carbon accounting framework, however, does not recognize this benefit and thus may effectively encourage land set-asides at the expense of real, measurable forest and forest resource-based climate change mitigation.

How to cite: Appiah Mensah, A., Petersson, H., Berndes, G., Egnell, G., Ellison, D., Lundblad, M., Lundmark, T., Lundström, A., Stendahl, J., and Wikberg, P.-E.: On the Role of Forestry in Climate Change Mitigation, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16472, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16472, 2021.

With the advent of global warming, forests are becoming an increasingly important carbon sink that can mitigate the negative effects of climate change. An understanding of the carbon dynamics of forests is, therefore, crucial to implement appropriate forest management strategies and to meet the expectations of the Paris Agreement with respect to international reporting schemes. One of the most frequently used models for simulating the dynamics of carbon stocks in forests is the Carbon Budget Model of the Canadian Forest Sector (CBM-CFS3). We applied this model in our study to evaluate the effects of harvesting on the carbon sink dynamics in Slovenian forests. Five harvesting scenarios were defined: (1) business as usual (BAU), (2) harvesting in line with current forest management plans (PLAN), (3) more frequent natural hazards (HAZ), (4) high harvest (HH) and (5) low harvest (LH). The simulated forest carbon dynamics revealed important differences between the harvesting scenarios. Relative to the base year of 2014, by 2050 the carbon stock in above-ground biomass is projected to increase by 28.4% (LH), 19% (BAU), 10% (PLAN), 6.5% (HAZ) and 1.2% (HH). Slovenian forests can be expected to be a carbon sink until harvesting exceeds approximately 9 million m³ annually, which is close to the calculated total annual volume increase. Our results are also important in terms of Forest Reference Levels (FRL), which will take place in European Union (EU) member states in the period 2021-2025. For Slovenia, the FRL was set to –3270.2 Gg CO₂ eq/year, meaning that the total timber harvested should not exceed 6 million m³ annually.

How to cite: Mali, B., Jevsenak, J., and Klopcic, M.: The effect of harvesting on national forest carbon sinks up to 2050 simulated by the CBM-CFS3 model: a case study from Slovenia, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-13486, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13486, 2021.

Whilst dedicated bioenergy crops with non-food uses are currently sparsely deployed across the world, most future energy pathways necessitate a sizeable scale-up of 100-500 million ha of land converted to these crops to provide both energy substitutes for fossil fuels and negative emissions through bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). In the face of expected bioenergy expansion, understanding the environmental and societal impact of this land-use change is important in determining where and how bioenergy crops should be deployed, and the trade-offs and co-benefits to the environment and society. Here we review the existing literature on two difficult to measure impacts which could prove critical to the future wide-scale acceptability of global bioenergy cropping in the temperate environment: biodiversity and amenity value. We focus on agricultural landscapes, since this is where large-scale bioenergy planting may be required. A meta-analysis of 42 studies on the biodiversity impacts of land-use change from either arable and grassland to bioenergy crops found strong benefits for bird abundance (+ 109 % ± 24 %), bird species richness (+ 100 % ± 31 %), arthropod abundance (+ 299 % ± 76 %), microbial biomass (+ 77 % ± 24 %), and plant species richness (+ 25 % ± 22 %) and a non-significant upward trend in earthworm abundance. Land-use change from arable land led to particularly strong benefits, providing an insight into how future land-use change to bioenergy crops could support biodiversity. Evidence concerning the impact of bioenergy crops on landscape amenity value highlighted the importance of landscape context, planting strategies, and landowner motivations in determining amenity values, with few generalizable conclusions. In this first meta-analysis to quanitfy the impacts of land-use change to bioenergy on on biodiversity and amenity,  we have demonsrated  improved farm-scale biodiversity on agricultural land but also demonstrated the lack of knowledge concerning public response to bioenergy crops which could prove crucial to the political feasibility of bioenergy policies such as BECCS.

How to cite: Donnison, C., Holland, R., Harris, Z., Eigenbrod, F., and Taylor, G.: Improved biodiversity from food to energy: Meta-analysis of land-use change to dedicated bioenergy crops, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-6737, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6737, 2021.

Miscanthus x giganteus thrives on poor soils, requiring little or no farm operations except annual harvest, efficiently recycles nutrients into the rhizome at senescence to be reused the following season and has a high water efficiency compared to other arable crops.  As such it is a popular choice for bioenergy crop growers, it can thrive on waste land, or poor agricultural soils that cannot give sufficient economic returns for food crops in many areas of the world.

We present work to better understand the global potential for M x giganteus yields and impacts as a bioenergy crop grown in the 21st century under IPCC climate RCP 8.5 and using the MiscanFor bioenergy model, showing how bioenergy crops compare across different countries for dry matter yield, water use, and soil carbon. We also show the uncertainty of projections inherent in choosing input data and the sensitivity of the model.

How to cite: Shepherd, A. and Hastings, A.: Impacts of miscanthus growth on soil carbon and water deficit, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-585, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-585, 2021.

To mitigate climate change, land take for renewable energy is accelerating at a time of increasing land use pressure and environmental degradation. Given land use change is the dominant driver of nature decline, over and above that of climate change, inclusion of local ecosystem consequences of land take for renewable energy decisions is critical. However, consideration of ecosystem impacts is hindered by lack of understanding and robust quantification methodologies. Here, we quantify the economic benefits of installing honeybee hives in solar parks by estimating the potential contribution to crop yields. We estimated that if honeybee hives were installed in all existing solar parks within England, pollination service benefits for pollinator dependent field crops, top fruits and soft fruit would have been £5.9 million in 2017, grounded in honeybee pollination crop values of £4.81-£75.04 ha^-1 for field crops and £635-£10,644 ha^-1 for fruit. If crop distributions were optimised to maximise solar park honeybee pollination, economic benefits could reach up to £80 million per year. However, this indicative of the maximum possible return and is unlikely to be viable given the other factors that influence crop distribution. Quantification of ecosystem co-benefits and costs of land take for renewable energy could inform location and management decisions, with the potential to improve ecosystem health in addition to energy system decarbonisation.

How to cite: Armstrong, A., Brown, L., Davies, G., Whyatt, D., and Potts, S.: Economic benefits of establishing honeybee hives on solar parks in agricultural landscapes, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8257, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8257, 2021.

Concomitant with the increase in solar photovoltaic (PV) energy development over the past decade has been the increasing emphasis on land sharing strategies that maximize the land use efficiency of solar energy developments.  Many of these strategies focus on improving the compatibility of solar energy development with other co-located land uses (e.g., agriculture) and by improving several ecosystem services that could have natural, societal, and industrial benefits. One such land opportunity is the restoration and management of native grassland vegetation beneath ground-mounted PV solar energy facilities, which has the potential to restore native habitat to conserve biodiversity and restore previously altered ecosystem services (e.g., natural pollination services). This presentation will discuss various assessment and modeling approaches to evaluate the scale and magnitude of the ecosystem services provided by different vegetation management strategies at solar PV energy development sites. This work demonstrates how multifunctional land uses in energy systems represents a win-win solution for energy and the environment by optimizing energy-food-ecology synergies. This work was conducted by Argonne National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.

How to cite: Walston, L. and Hartmann, H.: Evaluating the Ecosystem Service Benefits of Native Vegetation Management at Solar Energy Facilities, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7838, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7838, 2021.

Transitioning away from internal combustion engine private vehicles in favour of public transport, including electric and hydrogen alternatives, is recognised as an essential part of the solution to reduce the scale of climate change and meet net zero in the UK by 2050. This decarbonisation transition to low carbon transport will likely result in an increase in energy demand which will have impacts on both ecosystem services (ES) and natural capital (NC). Robust projections of societal energy demands post low carbon transition are therefore required to ensure adequate power generation is installed. In this study, we project the energy demand for electric and hydrogen cars, buses and trains between 2020 and 2050 based on the number of vehicles and distance travelled using the Transport Energy Air Pollution UK (TEAM-UK) model outputs. In this work, the spatial requirements of additional renewable energy (onshore/offshore wind and solar), nuclear and fossil fuels, on ES and NC was predicted by considering the expected electricity generation mix expected by 2050, the number of generation installations and energy density of each energy source. The outcomes of this analysis can assist policymakers in better understanding what energy types and transport networks need to be prioritised to efficiently meet net zero. Legislation requires increased low carbon electricity generation, though the impact on ES and NC are not currently quantified.

Energy demand was lower for electric transport (136,599 GWh) than hydrogen transport (425,532 GWh) for all vehicle types in 2050, however a combination of both power types will be needed to accommodate the full range of socioeconomic requirements. In addition, to power electrical transport, 1,515 km² of land will be required for solar, 1,672 km² for wind and 5 km² for expansion of the average nuclear power station by 2050. This will be approximately doubled for hydrogen provision due to the additional energy and conversions required to generate hydrogen.

In reality the finer scale mix between hydrogen and electric transport types in the future will depend on geographical location and resource availability. Rural areas may favour hydrogen power due to range restrictions, with electric transport more readily suited to urban areas with greater installed infrastructure. To reduce the requirements for additional electricity and maximise carbon output decreases, minimising the impact on NC and ES, policymakers need to focus on encouraging a modal shift towards low carbon public transport from private vehicles and to ensure a more sustainable route to decarbonising transport.

How to cite: Logan, K. G., Nelson, J. D., Chapman, J. D., Milne, J., and Hastings, A.: Decarbonising UK transport: Implications for electricity generation, land use and policy, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-122, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-122, 2021.

In times of international agreements and efforts to mitigate climate change and meet sustainable development, ecosystem management and forest conservation deserve special attention to promote human and environmental sustenance. Tropical forests have been declining worldwide, and biodiversity is under constant threat. Understanding the future potential of environmental services requires analysis of the relationship of socioeconomic drivers and anthropogenic land use change (LUC). Population and economic growth, agricultural production, and human capital have a dual relationship of cause and consequence with LUC. Likewise, changing patterns of land use, through agriculture and silviculture activities, is directly associated to market and technical progress, but also to political, institutional, and socioeconomic development. Studying such relationships enhances the analyses on the ability of institutional factors to promote environmental conservation, economic growth, and social welfare. Studies on LUC are historically based on physical variables; however, institutional and political drivers have shown to be core to forest degradation. The present paper aims at investigating the role of physical and institutional factor on global deforestation. This paper draws from recent global remote sensing data on land use from ESA Climate Change Initiative (ESA/CCI) from 1992 and 2015. To assess drivers of deforestation, we employ a logit model regression accounting for a global spatially explicit dataset on land use, regressed with physical, economic, and socioeconomic variables. We make use of the suitability indicators calculated by IIASA for different agricultural crops within the Global Agro-Ecological Zones modelling. As institutional factors we consider areas under protection based on spatial datasets provided by UNEP and wetland international, and include the country level corruption index of Transparency International. Our preliminary analysis shows that institutional instability is significantly related to LUC. In areas where land should be under protection due to non-market ecosystem services, political instability is likely to stimulate land use. Likewise, insecurity in land tenure might lead to a short-term maximization of profits, through full deforestation and exploitation of the soil fertility, instead of a long-term sustainable use.

How to cite: Moreira Dantas, I. R. and Söder, M.: Global Deforestation Revisited: The Role of Political and Institutional Factors, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16050, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16050, 2021.

Over the past 40 years, Paraguay has lost the majority of its natural forest cover, thus becoming one of the countries with the highest deforestation rates in the world. Uninterrupted deforestation practices in the Paraguayan Chaco between 1987 and 2012 resulted in the loss of 27% of its original cover, accounting for almost 44,000 km² of forested areas depleted. The rapid expansion of the agricultural frontier, cattle ranching, and illegal logging has converted the last forest remnants into isolated patches, thus endangering their continuity and biodiversity within them. In response to these events, the Paraguayan government has implemented numerous environmental programs and regulations to amend the damage that had happened in the past. Although governmental agencies claim a reduction in deforestation activities in the region, proper scientific environmental data that analyze the long-term effect of such regulations/programs remain scarce. Within this context, the present research analyzes the impact of local governments on changes occurred in Paraguayan Chaco forest between the years 1986 and 2020. Remote sensing data acquired from Landsat 4, 5, 7 and 8 images were used to derive the extent of the forest cover and deforestation rates over 34 years. Dynamics of the forest cover was correlated with each of the 10 government terms within the timeframe of the study. By analyzing the forest cover data during and after each term (around five years per government term), we sought to understand the influence of local policies on deforestation activities in the eco-region, aiming to identify social, political, and institutional drivers of change. A comprehensive assessment of creation and effectivities of protected areas, land concession to indigenous communities, and development/implementation of local policies and environmental laws are part of this study. Preliminary results show a significative difference on forest cover loss among governments terms ranging between 1% (2,385 km²) and 9% (14,422 km²). The lack of clear regulations, sound law enforcement, financial support, and inappropriate governance were initially identified as key drivers of change. The use of multi-temporal information was demonstrated to be a key component for designing, supporting, and monitoring conservation strategies and policies. It is crucial to consider not only the outlook of laws and policies aiming to halt deforestation activities but their actual influence on the behavior of natural resources over time.

How to cite: Garcia Calabrese, M., Salinas Romero, S., Cassacia Ibarrola, C., Morinigo, L., Alvarenga, M., and Da Ponte, E.: Understanding the relationship between environmental policies and deforestation activities in the Paraguayan Chaco, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-10020, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-10020, 2021.

Land use in the nearby of a Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) landfill can be strongly affected by the waste management tasks (transport, landfilling and closure). Effects extend from the phases prior to the construction of the landfill until years after the completion of the landfilling process in areas located beyond the perimeter of the plot occupied by the landfill. In this work a new methodology for the analysis of land use change over time is presented. The methodology is based on the use of a new environmental index named WEI (Weighted Environmental Index). WEI is based on the use of GIS techniques accounting for different information sources (digital cartography, aerial photographs and satellite images). WEI assigns environmental values to land use based on the degree of anthropogenic intervention and its occupation surface. A georeferenced multitemporal statistical analysis is performed considering the values of WEI previously assigned to every land use. The methodology has been applied to analyze the land use change near the main MSW landfills of Valencia Region (Spain) where landfilling is currently the only waste disposal technique available. Data have been obtained from the Spanish Land Occupation Information System (SIOSE) public database and integrate GIS information about land use/land cover on an extensive, high-detailed scale. Results demonstrate the application of the WEI to real case studies and the importance of integrating statistical analysis of WEI evolution over time to arrive at a better understanding of the socio-economic and environmental processes that induce land-use change.

How to cite: Rodrigo-Ilarri, J., Romero-Hernández, C. P., and Rodrigo-Clavero, M.-E.: Evaluation of the land use evolution near solid waste landfills using a new weighted environmental index based on GIS techniques, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-12671, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12671, 2021.

In semi-arid to arid South-west Morocco, the once ubiquitous endemic argan tree (Argania spinosa) forms the basis of a traditional silvo-pastoral agroforestry system with complex usage rights involving pasturing and tree-browsing by goats, sheep and camels, smallholder agriculture and oil production. Widespread clearing of the open-canopy argan forests has been undertaken in the 12^th–17^th century for sugarcane production, and again in the 20^th century for fuelwood extraction and conversion to commercial agriculture. The remaining argan woodlands have continued to decline due to firewood extraction, charcoal-making, overgrazing and overbrowsing. Soil and vegetation are increasingly being degraded; natural rejuvenation is hindered, and soil-erosion rates rise due to reduced infiltration and increased runoff. Numerous studies indicate that tree density and canopy cover have been generally decreasing for the last 200 years. However, there is little quantitative and spatially explicit information about these forest-cover dynamics.

In our study, the tree-cover change between 1967 and 2019 was analysed for 30 test sites of 1 ha each in argan woodlands of different degradation stages in the provinces of Taroudant, Agadir Ida-Outanane and Chtouka-Aït Baha. We used historical black-and-white satellite photography from the American reconnaissance programme CORONA, recent high-resolution multispectral imagery from the commercial WorldView satellites and ultrahigh resolution small-format aerial photography taken with an unmanned aerial system (UAS) to map the presence, absence and comparative crown-size class of 2610 trees in 1967 and 2019. We supplemented the remotely-sensed data with field observations on tree structure and architecture.

Results show that plant densities reach up to 300 argan trees and shrubs per hectare, and the mean tree density has increased from 58 trees/ha in 1967 to 86 trees/ha in 2019. While 7% of the 1967 trees have vanished today, more than one third of today’s trees could not be observed in 1967. This positive change has a high uncertainty, however, as most of the increase concerns small trees (< 3 m diameter) which might have been missed on the lower-resolution CORONA images.

When combined with our field data on tree architecture, tree count – albeit a parameter easily attained by remote sensing – is revealed as too simple an indicator for argan-forest dynamics, and the first impression of a positive development needs to be revised: The new small trees as well as trees with decreased crown sizes clearly show much stronger degradation characteristics than others, indicating increased pressures on the argan ecosystem during recent decades. Structural traits of the smaller trees also suggest that the apparent increase of tree count is not a result of natural rejuvenation, but mostly of stump re-sprouting, often into multi-stemmed trees, after felling of a tree. The density of the argan forest in the 1960s, prior to the general availability of cooking gas in the region and before the stronger enforcement of the argan logging ban following the declaration of the UNESCO biosphere reserve, may have marked a historic low in our study area, making the baseline of our change analysis far removed from the potential natural state of the argan ecosystem.

How to cite: Marzolff, I., Kirchhoff, M., Stephan, R., Seeger, M., Aït Hssaïne, A., and Ries, J. B.: Degradation or recovery of argan woodlands in South Morocco? Tree count from satellite imagery between 1967–2019 may underestimate pressures on dryland forests status, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-2612, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2612, 2021.

Biosphere Reserves (BR) are territories recognized by UNESCO for their natural and cultural heritage and their role in promoting solutions to harmonize biodiversity conservation with the sustainable use of natural resources. Further, BRs are identified as “learning places for sustainable development”, emphasizing their importance to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. However, Portuguese BRs lack recognition from society as well as from the local, regional or national entities as privileged instruments and areas for valuing and developing the territory.

To enhance the relevance and visibility of the BRs in society and among stakeholders, we designed a project based on the assessment of ecosystem services (ES), as they play fundamental roles in the mitigation and adaptation to climate change, and on the sustainability of the communities and their territories. Our project seeks to structure and foster collective dynamics in these social-ecological systems, respecting the autonomy and diversity of context and heritage that characterizes the Portuguese BRs. Our work is based on a conceptual model with three fundamental pillars. First, we will identify available geographical and biological information and combine it with remote sensing data (Landsat and Sentinel) to map the current and potential ES provided by Portuguese BRs. Second, in each BR, we will implement participatory multi-actor methodologies and focal groups to select the key ES to promote sustainable development and valorisation of natural endogenous resources. To do so, we will use a holistic assessment of the ecological, economic and social values of the different ES, as well as of their role in mitigating and adapting to climate change and environmental change. Finally, we will train local stakeholders on the valuing, promotion and sustainable production and consumption of ES, as to help these communities implementing the Sustainable Development Plans that will be prepared for each BR and in accordance with the UN’s Agenda 2030.

Through complementary initiatives and a comprehensive and networked programmatic action, “Biosphere Reserves: Sustainable territories, Resilient communities” seeks to add value to Portuguese BRs, increasing their resilience and sustainability, and to promote their unique territories and heritage, while showcasing them as model areas for the sustainable development.

How to cite: Alves, J., Duran, J., Sousa, J. P., Castro, P., Martinho, F., Pardal, M., Måren, I., and Freitas, H.: Biosphere Reserves: Sustainable territories, Resilient communities – A conceptual model for the assessment of ecosystem services, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-13567, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13567, 2021.

Land system change is implicated in many sustainability challenges as its alteration impacts ecosystems and exacerbate the vulnerability of communities, particularly where livelihoods are largely dependent on natural resources. The production of a land use-cover map for year 2020 extended the time-series for assessing land use-cover dynamics over a period of 45 years (1975-2020). The case of Nigeria is examined as the land area encompass several agro-ecological zones. The classification scheme countries utilise for estimating Land Degradation Neutrality baseline and monitoring of the Sustainable Development Goal 15.3.1 indicator (proportion of degraded land over total land area) was used, based on seven land use-cover classes (tree-covered area, grassland, cropland, wetland, artificial surface area, otherland, and waterbody). Severity of land degradation, computed as changes in vegetation productivity using the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), as well as changes in ecosystem service values were examined across the different land use-cover types, in areas of change and persistence. Land degradation is most severe in settlement areas and wetlands with declining trends in 34% of settlement areas and 29% in wetlands respectively. About 19% of tree-covered areas experienced increasing trends. In some areas of land use-cover persistence, vegetation productivity declined despite no land change occurring. For example, vegetation productivity declined in about 35% and 9% of persistent wetlands and otherland respectively between 2000 and 2020, whereas there was improvement in 22% of persistent grasslands, 18% of persistent otherlands and 12% of persistent croplands. In land change areas, about 12% and 8% of wetlands and tree-covered areas had declining vegetation trends respectively, whereas it improved the most in croplands (20%), and grasslands (16%). With some wetland, cropland and otherland areas degrading the most, protecting these critical ecosystems is required to sustain their functions and services. The finding that vegetation productivity may decline in areas of persistence underscores the importance of intersecting land use-cover (in terms of persistence and change) with vegetation productivity to identify pathways for enhancing ecological sustainability.

How to cite: Akinyemi, F. and Ifejika Speranza, C.: Land change effects on ecosystem degradation across Nigerian agro-ecological zones from 1975 through 2020, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7204, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7204, 2021.

Water withdrawals for irrigated crop production constitute the largest global consumer of blue water resources. Monitoring the dynamics of irrigated crop cultivation allows to track changes in water consumption of irrigated cropping, which is particularly paramount in water-scarce arid and semi-arid areas. We analyzed changes in irrigated crop cultivation along with occurrence of hydrological droughts for the Amu Darya river basin of Central Asia (534,700 km²), once the largest tributary river to the Aral Sea before large-scale irrigation projects have grossly reduced the amount of water that reaches the river delta. We used annual and seasonal spectral-temporal metrics derived from Landsat time series to quantify the three predominant cropping practices in the region (first season, second season, double cropping) for every year between 1988 and 2020. We further derived unbiased area estimates for the cropping classes at the province level based on a stratified random sample (n=2,779). Our results reveal a small yet steady decrease in irrigated second season cultivation across the basin. Regionally, we observed a gradual move away from cotton monocropping in response to the policy changes that were instigated since the mid-1990s. We compared the observed cropping dynamics to the occurrence of hydrological droughts, i.e., periods with inadequate water resources for irrigation. We find that areas with higher drought risks rely more on irrigation of the second season crops. Overall, our analysis provides the first fine-scale, annual crop type maps for the irrigated areas in the Amu Darya basin. The results shed light on how institutional changes and hydroclimatic factors that affect land-use decision-making, and thus the dynamics of crop type composition, in the vast irrigated areas of Central Asia.

How to cite: Müller, D., Dara, A., Krause, C., Peña-Guerrero, M. D., Schmitz, T., Umirbekov, A., Wei, Y., and Rufin, P.: Post-Soviet changes in irrigated crop production in the Amu Darya Basin, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16266, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16266, 2021.

The land sector plays a crucial role in the context of climate change, being both a contributor to the problem and part of its solution. On one side, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture, forestry and other land uses (AFOLU sector) cover the 24% of global emissions, representing the second hot spot in the contribution to climate change after the energy sector. On the other side, this sector offers the exclusive capacity to remove atmospheric carbon dioxide and store it in soils and biomass.

The challenge is to understand the extent to which sustainable land management can be a valuable solution to increase the mitigation potential of the land sector, particularly at small-scale rural landscape level. A land-based approach is developed and tested for application at small-scale rural landscape level, aiming at reducing and offsetting GHG emissions from the livestock activities, one of the main sources of GHG emissions of the whole agricultural sector. The proposed land-based approach builds on an ensemble of methodologies, including Geographic Information System (GIS) elaboration, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and methodologies from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that allow estimating livestock GHG emissions and the mitigation potential of sustainable land-use options applied in the same small-scale rural landscape (e.g. improvement of ruminants’ diet, biogas from manure, reduction of synthetic fertilizers, minimum/no-tillage, natural herbaceous cover, reuse of agricultural residues, new orchards and forests on marginal lands).

Results from a case study in Italy show that land-based mitigation options applied at small-scale rural landscape level can reduce and completely offset the GHG livestock emissions of the same area, leading to carbon neutral livestock systems, in line with the objectives of the EU Green Deal and the global climate commitments. Thus, this study confirms that the land sector can strongly contribute to climate change mitigation if sustainable land-use options are applied. Moreover, when sustainable land-use options are applied with a proximity approach in a small-scale, the results are not limited to the carbon neutrality of the livestock production but involve also other tangible environmental and socio-economic benefits in the territory (e.g. sustainable agriculture, biodiversity protection, water and air quality, new green areas, tourism, well-being etc.). 

A such sustainable land-based approach can be applied to all food systems (not only livestock) and can be scaled at global level involving an infinite number of districts (organized at local, regional or national level) with the potential to influence globally the food production toward a sustainable model of the whole land sector. The implementation of a such sustainable land management aiming to a carbon neutral food production can be supported at public policies level, under the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the Carbon Farming schemes, but also by the private sector in the framework of voluntary carbon mechanisms.   

How to cite: Chiriacò, M. V. and Valentini, R.: A land-based approach for climate change mitigation in the livestock sector, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7959, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7959, 2021.

Violent conflicts related to pastoralists-farmers’ interactions in Nigeria have assumed an unprecedented dimension, causing loss of lives and livelihoods. The mid-Benue trough (Benue and Taraba States) has suffered most from the conflicts. This study aims to provide knowledge on the socio-ecological drivers of pastoralists-farmers’ conflicts in the mid-Benue trough from the year 2000 to 2020 and to identify pathways to solving them. First, data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project were used to map the conflicts. Second, to understand the nexus of climate change, land use and the conflicts, the study analyzed satellite data of Land Surface Temperature (LST) as a proxy for climate change, using data from the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite and Land Use Land Cover (LULC), using LandSat 7 ETM and LandSat 8 ETM+ data, then linked them to the mapped conflicts. Third, to understand causes and impacts of the conflict on pastoralists and farmers’ livelihoods, 100 interviews were conducted, 50 for each group and analyzed using content analysis and descriptive statistics. Results showed that there were 2532 fatalities from 309 conflict events between pastoralists and farmers. The incidents exhibited statistically significant clustering and were minimal between the year 2000 and 2012, increasing gradually until the year 2013 when it began to rise geometrically. The Getis-Ord Gi hotspot analysis revealed the conflict hotspots to include Agatu, Oturkpo, Gwer East and Gashaka Local Government Areas. The results from the LST analysis showed that the area coverage of high LST increased from 30 percent in 2000 to 38 percent in 2020, while extremely high LST area also increased from 14 to 16 percent. A significantly high percentage of the conflicts (87 percent) occurred in areas with high LST (>30⁰C). In addition, the LULC analyses showed that built-up land area increased by 35 km² (0.1 percent) and dense forests reduced by 798 km² (0.1 percent). Notably, shrublands and grasslands, which are the resource domains of the pastoralists reduced by 11,716 km²  (13.1 percent) and croplands of farmers increased by 12,316 km² (13.8 percent). This presents an apparent transition of LULC from shrublands and grasslands to croplands in the area. Further analyses showed that 63 percent of the conflicts occurred in croplands and 16 percent in shrublands and grasslands. Hence, the reduction of land resource available to pastoralists and their subsequent cropland encroachment were identified as major causes of the conflict. It was therefore concluded that land development for other purposes is a major driver of pastoralists-farmers’ conflicts in the study area. There is thus a need to integrate conflict maps, LST and LULC dynamics to support dialogue, land use planning and policy formulation for sustainable land management to guide pastoral and farming activities.

How to cite: Njoku, C., Okpiliya, F., Efiong, J., and Ifejika Speranza, C.: Pastoralists-farmers’ conflicts in Nigeria’s mid-Benue Trough: Socio-ecological drivers and pathways to addressing the conflicts., EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-13643, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13643, 2021.

Photovoltaic (PV) power data are a valuable but as yet under-utilised resource that could be used to characterise global irradiance with unprecedented spatio-temporal resolution. The resulting knowledge of atmospheric conditions can then be fed back into weather models and will ultimately serve to improve forecasts of PV power itself. This provides a data-driven alternative to statistical methods that use post-processing to overcome inconsistencies between ground-based irradiance measurements and the corresponding predictions of regional weather models (see for instance Frank et al., 2018). This work reports first results from an algorithm developed to infer global horizontal irradiance as well as atmospheric optical properties such as aerosol or cloud optical depth from PV power measurements.

Building on previous work (Buchmann, 2018), an improved forward model of PV power as a function of atmospheric conditions was developed. As part of the BMWi-funded project MetPVNet, PV power data from twenty systems in the Allgäu region were made available, and the corresponding irradiance, temperature and wind speed were measured during two measurement campaigns in autumn 2018 and summer 2019. System calibration was performed using all available clear sky days; the corresponding irradiance was simulated using libRadtran (Emde et al., 2016). Particular attention was paid to describing the dynamic variations in PV module temperature in order to correctly take into account the heat capacity of the solar panels.

PV power data from the calibrated systems were then used together with both the DISORT and MYSTIC radiative transfer codes (Emde et al., 2016) to infer aerosol optical depth, cloud optical depth and irradiance under all sky conditions.  The results were compared to predictions from the COSMO weather model, and the accuracy of the inverted quantities was compared using both a simple and more complex forward model. The potential of the method to extract irradiance data over a larger area as well as the increase in information from combining neighbouring PV systems will be explored in future work.

References
 
Buchmann, T., 2018: Potenzial von Photovoltaikanlagen zur Ableitung raum-zeitlich hoch aufgelöster Globalstrahlungsdaten. Heidelberg University, http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/24687/.
Emde, C., and Coauthors, 2016: The libRadtran software package for radiative transfer calculations (version 2.0.1). Geosci. Model Dev., 9, 1647–1672, doi:10.5194/gmd-9-1647-2016. https://www.geosci-model-dev.net/9/1647/2016/.
Frank, C. W., S. Wahl, J. D. Keller, B. Pospichal, A. Hense, and S. Crewell, 2018: Bias correction of a novel European reanalysis data set for solar energy applications. Sol. Energy, 164, 12–24, doi:10.1016/j.solener.2018.02.012. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2018.02.012.

How to cite: Barry, J., Böttcher, D., Grabenstein, J., Pfeilsticker, K., Herman-Czezuch, A., Kimiaie, N., Meilinger, S., Schirrmeister, C., Gödde, F., Mayer, B., Deneke, H., Witthuhn, J., Hofbauer, P., and Struck, M.: Irradiance and atmospheric optical properties from photovoltaic power data: model improvements and first results, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7581, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7581, 2021.

Energy output from photovoltaics (PV) strongly depends on the respective weather situation. To ensure continuous energy availability in power grids with large PV contribution, flexibly manageable power plants have to compensate for variations in PV power production. Within the project NETFLEX, an intra-hour irradiance now-casting algorithm is developed as a basis for a PV power forecast used for management of a combined PV / biogas power plant.

The now-casting algorithm is designed around a cloud representation in a simplistic 2D advection model, which is updated with currently measured data and which projects cloud situations up to 15 minutes into the future. Main input to the model are images captured by two CMS Schreder all-sky imagers (ASI) installed at the PV plant in locations separated by about 530m. Captured images are processed to extract cloud masks, cloud base heights and cloud movement. To obtain cloud masks, ratios of red and blue channels as well as saturation and brightness are compared to reference data from a clearsky library. This library is composed from synthetic clearsky data computed by the radiative transfer model libRadtran (Mayer and Kylling, 2005), which are processed to resemble imager geometry and optics. The creation of synthetic references allows for any desired sun position and aerosol condition. Simultaneously captured images of both cameras are evaluated and corresponding pixels are matched. Exact calibration of the imager geometry then allows for cloud base height derivation using the method of miss-pointing vectors (Kölling et al., 2019). Consecutive images are evaluated for each ASI to estimate horizontal cloud motion by matching corresponding pixels. All cloud information computed from ASI images is assimilated into the 2D model as a base for cloud field predictions with information about cloud position, base height and velocity. The model-centered approach allows for flexible integration of additional data sources, e.g. satellite imagery and numerical weather prediction data.

Validation of image evaluation methods and now-casting model is done using synthetic all-sky images of LES cloud fields. Additionally, cloud base height from a ceilometer as well as global and direct integrated solar irradiance were measured on site of the PV power plant. This also allows for validation on real world cases.

Literature:

Kölling, T., Zinner, T., and Mayer, B.: Aircraft-based stereographic reconstruction of 3-D cloud geometry, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 12, 1155–1166, 2019.

Mayer, B. and Kylling, A.: Technical note: The libRadtran software package for radiative transfer calculations - description and examples of use, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 5, 1855–1877, 2005.

How to cite: Gregor, P., Zinner, T., Mayer, B., and Schreder, J.: Deriving cloud information from all-sky images for intra-hour PV nowcasting, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-14726, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14726, 2021.

Phenomena in the atmospheric boundary layer are investigated in the Field Experiment on Sub-Mesoscale Spatio-Temporal Variability in Lindenberg (FESSTVaL, www.fesstval.de). Our aim is the retrieval of wind gusts from measurements of a Doppler wind lidar (DWL). DWLs allow the determination of wind vector profiles with high vertical resolution (∼30 m) and represent an alternative to classical meteorological tower observations. They can receive signals from altitudes higher than towers and are flexible in positioning. However, the retrieval of wind gusts from DWL measurements is not trivial because a monostatic lidar provides only one radial velocity, i.e., only one component of a three-dimensional vector, and measurements in three linearly independent directions are necessary to derive the wind vector. These have to be performed sequentially which limits the achievable time resolution, while wind gusts are short-lived phenomena. Therefore, we have developed a new wind retrieval that is applicable to different scanning configurations and various requested time resolutions. We tested several DWL configurations in autumn 2019 using DWL systems ’StreamLine’ from Halo Photonics and evaluated gust peaks and the 10min mean wind at 90 m height against data from a sonic anemometer at the meteorological tower. The most useful configuration for retrieving wind gusts is a fast continuous scan mode (CSM) that completes a full circulation cone within 3.4s. During this time interval, about eleven radial velocity measurements are completed. This fast CSM configuration was again successfully operated over a three-months period in summer 2020. We found that CSM paired with our new retrieval technique provides gusts which compare well to classical anemometer measurements from a meteorological tower. Future work includes the application of the new retrieval to DWL data during the FESSTVaL campaign in 2021 when DWL measurements are planned at different sites in order to study the sub-mesoscale variability of wind gusts.

How to cite: Steinheuer, J., Detring, C., Beyrich, F., Löhnert, U., and Fiedler, S.: New flexible retrieval for gusts and mean winds from Doppler wind lidars, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-2867, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-2867, 2021.

Simulations of turbulent wind flows in complex, mountainous terrain prove to be challenging tasks for today’s numerical simulation models. However, knowing about these wind flow patterns and speeds would be beneficial to assess potential environmental risks for various stakeholders – aviation, wind farms, ski resorts, cable cars or others. With the PALM model system, a state-of-the-art turbulence resolving meteorological model for atmospheric boundary layer flows is available, that can be used to assess these types of questions. By treating topography on a cartesian grid, complex terrain can be accurately represented in simulations.

In this study, the complex local flow patterns in mountainous terrain were analyzed by means of high-resolution large eddy simulations with the PALM model system. This was conducted for the Rhine valley region focusing on a small peculiar topographic feature upstream of Balzers in the area of the border between the Principality of Liechtenstein and Switzerland, were flow splitting is known to occur. There, Foehn events lead to pronounced local wind maxima and pose a damaging risk to the upwind part of the village. The model results were compared with data from measurement masts equipped with sonic and cup-anemometers at the position of assumed wind speed maxima. As well, measurements of a continuous-wave LIDAR system located at the outflow of the side valley were integrated in our study. The validation measurements for the Foehn events in Balzers were taken in December 2020, during which two pronounced Foehn events took place.

In PALM, a nested simulation approach was chosen, with the smallest domain having a resolution of only a few meters. The simulation was forced by COSMO-1 model results in order to factor in the synoptic weather conditions of the respective days. We show model results of the flow patterns that occur in this complex topography, analyze the wind maxima present in the valley and compare the results with local measurement data. This study demonstrates how large eddy simulation tools like PALM can produce insights into complex flow structures in mountainous terrain, and how these insights can be used to make more informed decisions to protect residents from damaging outcomes of environmental risks.

How to cite: Spirig, C. T., Fluck, S., Vogt, K., and Anet, J. G.: Comparing large eddy simulations with sonic anemometer and LIDAR measurement data during Foehn events in complex terrain, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-10881, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-10881, 2021.

Extreme wind speeds are a multifaceted environmental risk. They may cause considerable damage to infrastructure (e.g., bridges, private property), they can jeopardize maritime and aviation activities, and sometimes even human safety. Furthermore, the design of wind turbines for on and off-shore wind farms requires a study of the return periods of extreme wind speeds in combination with the lifespan of the wind turbines. Windstorms also result in major economic losses and cause up to 80 % of the natural hazards' long term insurance loss in Europe. The scope of this work is to identify location-specific extreme wind speed thresholds and obtain accurate estimates of exceedances for multiple future horizons. In this context, the Extreme Value Analysis framework is used for providing the return periods and the respective return levels of extreme wind speeds. The Peaks Over Threshold method is utilized for the 10 m wind speed for a domain centered over Greece, in Southeastern Mediterranean. Wind speed data at 10 m are extracted from the ERA5 reanalysis dataset that provides hourly estimates of surface wind speed with a horizontal resolution of 0.25°x0.25°, from 1979/01/01 up to 2019/12/31 (i.e., 41 years). The thresholds are selected using the Mean Residual Life plots, which is the most reliable method for identifying accurate threshold values. The seasonal analysis of the exceedances is discussed in terms of the physical mechanisms in the region. The exceedances are modelled using the Generalized Pareto Distribution, whose shape and scale parameters (ξ and σ, respectively) are estimated using the Maximum Likelihood Estimation method. The return levels and their confidence intervals are estimated for return periods up to 100 years. Geographic Information Systems are used for mapping future projections of extreme wind speeds and the corresponding confidence intervals. The results are discussed in terms of identifying high-risk areas and the findings could assist in informed decision-making in the wind energy industry. The proposed methodological framework could be extended to other areas characterized by particularly high wind speeds and the results can contribute towards sustainable investments and support adaptation mechanisms.

How to cite: Blougouras, G., Tzanis, C. G., and Philippopoulos, K.: Extreme wind speed climatology over Greece, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-3117, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-3117, 2021.

Wind turbines in a wind farm extract energy from the atmospheric flow and convert it into electricity, resulting in a localized momentum deficit in the wake that reduces energy availability for downwind turbines. Atmospheric momentum convergence from above, below, and sides into the wakes replenish the lost momentum, at least partially, so that turbines deep inside a wind farm can continue to function. In this study, we explore recovery processes in hypothetical offshore wind farms with particular emphasis on comparing the spatial patterns and magnitudes of horizontal and vertical recovery processes and understanding the role of mesoscale phenomena like sea breezes in momentum recovery in wind farms.

For this study, we use the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, a state-of-the-art mesoscale model equipped with a wind turbine parameterization, to simulate deep offshore and coastal wind farms with different wind turbine spacings under realistic initial and boundary conditions. The wind farms consist of 10000 turbines rated 3 MW spread over a 50 km x 50 km area. We conduct experiments with various background conditions, including low wind, high wind, and sea breeze cases identified using Borne’s method.

Results show that for deep offshore wind farms, power generation peaks at the upwind edge and monotonically decreases downwind into the interior due to cumulative wake effects of multiple rows of turbines. Vertical turbulent transport of momentum from aloft is the main contributor to recovery except in cases with strong background winds and high inter-turbine spacing where horizontal advective momentum transport can also contribute equally. Coastal wind farms behave similarly in the absence of sea-breezes.  However, under sea breeze conditions, the power production is high at the upwind edge and decreases thereafter but starts to increase again towards the downwind edge of the wind farm because of the sea breeze. The results further show that the contribution of horizontal (vertical) recovery in case of sea breeze conditions increases (decreases) to around 14% (86%) as compared to the non-sea breeze conditions where the horizontal (vertical) recovery contributes 9% (90%) to the momentum recovery in the wind farms. Vertical recovery shows a systematic dependence on wind farm density and wind speed. This relationship can be quantified using low-order empirical equations that can perhaps be used to develop parameterizations for replenishment in linear wake models. Overall, this study is likely to significantly advance our understanding of recovery processes in wind farms and wind farm-ABL interactions.

How to cite: Gupta, T. and Baidya Roy, S.: Recovery processes in coastal wind farms, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-12303, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12303, 2021.

TRAIN²WIND is a PhD TRAINing school analysing enTRAINment in offshore WIND farms with computer models and experiments. By its very nature, a wind turbine extracts energy from the wind, which is replenished from the wind field on the sides and above due to the ambient turbulence. However, offshore the turbulence is lower, and wind farms are typically larger than onshore, therefore the wind can only be replenished from above in a process called entrainment. Train²Wind will investigate the entrainment process using advanced high-resolution computer modelling and wind tunnel models together with measurements of the wind field above, in and downstream of large wind farms, using lidars, radars, satellites and Unmanned Aerial Systems.

Besides the natural science package, one humanities PhD student at the University of Copenhagen will investigate the collaboration between the researchers from a social science and collaboration tools perspective.

The main work is done during the education of 18 fellows, where 13 embark on a PhD, while the other ones are employed for one year. The students will work with high-fidelity numerical simulations, lidars, unmanned aerial systems, wind tunnels and satellite data in order to understand entrainment of new momentum in very large wind farms. This changes the atmospheric boundary layer over a very extended wind farm, which becomes a wind turbine array boundary layer. The resulting change in wind resource is the main object of interest. The main planned activity is an experimental campaign at a major cluster of wind farms, probably in the North Sea. Another activity revolves around vertical axis turbines and their significantly different wake pattern, a potential mitigation measure.

So far we recruited the fellows and started with the simulations and the development of the hardware. We intend to employ a vertical take-off and landing model plane with a wing span of about 2m, which would allow to start and land from a helicopter pad offshore, and after the vertical start enjoy the advantage of a winged plane and its much larger range and endurance. Another instrument is a hexacopter mounted with a sonic anemometer, which allows to sample in a single point much akin a conventional met mast, but at any given point in or above a large wind farm. Lidar usage and development is part of the project as well, with a floating lidar in Bergen University and long-range lidars at DTU.

There are three numerical codes used in Train²Wind: Ellipsys3D, a Large Eddy Simulation (LES) high-fidelity code from DTU, WIRE-LES, another LES code from EPFL, and the Weather Research and Forecasting model run at DTU.

The outcome of the project is more knowledge of the entrainment process, and a guidance on how close to position clusters of wind farms in order not to exhaust the wind resource. The talk will give an overview of the project, highlighting the challenges.

How to cite: Giebel, G., Göçmen, T., Mann, J., Sempreviva, A. M., Lund, H., Reuder, J., Bange, J., and Porte-Agel, F.: Train2Wind, or how large is an infinite wind farm?, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15816, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15816, 2021.

We present the evolution of the methods used to create and validate the various numerical wind atlases during the past ten years of the Wind Atlas for South Africa (WASA) project. In WASA 3, we improved on the previous numerical wind atlases by:

• Creating an ensemble of 2-year simulations to find the optimal set of parameterisations and surface conditions for the wind climate of South Africa.
• Using a new method of generalisation and downscaling of the WRF-derived wind climate using the PyWAsP engine.
• Producing the most extensive to date wind climatology for South Africa, 30 years (1990–2019) simulation covering all South Africa at 3.33 km × 3.33 km spatial resolution and 30 minutes time output.

We will discuss these three areas and their improvements to the wind atlas' quality. The WASA 3 wind atlas' final error statistics show that the new WRF + PyWAsP method has a MAPE of 11.8% and 3.5% for the long-term mean power density and mean wind speed, respectively. These statistics are improved from those in WASA 1 and WASA 2.

When disregarding the two masts (WM09 and WM11) located in highly complex terrain, where the methodology was never designed, the use of the WRF and WRF + PyWAsP downscaling narrows the error distributions for both long-term wind speed and power density compared to the global reanalysis, ERA5.

The validated numerical wind atlas has further been used to model the wind resources of the entire land area of South Africa using the microscale WAsP model. Raster data exist with a horizontal resolution of 250 meters and three levels of 50, 100 and 150 meters a.g.l. of mean wind speed, power density, air density, Weibull A and k parameters, and ruggedness index.  These data sets and the WRF dataset will be made available in the public domain at the end of the project. Data sets for other heights above the ground and offshore can easily be added later.

How to cite: Hahmann, A., Lennard, C., Floors, R., Cavar, D., Mortensen, N. G., Olsen, B. T., Prinsloo, L., Bechmann, A., Davis, N., and Hansen, J. C.: Ten years of the Wind Atlas of South Africa: Final results from WASA 3, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-6020, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-6020, 2021.

An atlas of the 50-year gust wind at a resolution of 3 s is calculated over South Africa, at a spatial resolution of 3.3 km at several heights, including 10 m and 60 m where measurements are available.

In developing the atlas, first, 30-year wind climate (1990 - 2019) is simulated using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The WRF model was initialized and forced with the ERA5 data, with three nested domains and the innermost one, covering the whole country, has a spatial resolution of 3.3 km. The model outputs include the wind time series at several heights (50 m, 100 m and 200 m) every 30 minutes. The 50-year 30-min winds at several heights are then obtained by application of a suitable extreme value distribution. Afterwards, the Kaimal turbulence model is applied, in connection with an assumption of Gaussian process for the time series in the time scale 30 min to 3 s, to obtain the corresponding 3 s gust value to the 30-min values of the 50-year winds.

There is a prevalence of a variety of strong wind events in South Africa, including mid-latitude cyclones, fronts and thunderstorms. The different physical mechanisms have different levels of challenges to the simple modeling approaches applied above. For more than 100 measurement stations, the 50-year gust values have also been calculated, mostly at 10 m, some at 60 m. They are used to validate the modeled values and identify regions and areas where our meso-to-turbulence modeling needs improvement or adjustment to eventually produce a verified extreme gust atlas.

How to cite: Larsén, X., Kruger, A., Floors, R., Cavar, D., and Hahmann, A.: Extreme gust atlas over South Africa, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5829, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5829, 2021.

Power curves for a substantial number of wind turbine generators (WTG) became available in a number of public sources during the recent years. They can be used to estimate the power production of a wind farm fleet with uncertainty determined by the accuracy and consistency of the power curve data. However, in order to estimate power losses inside a wind farm due to wind speed reduction caused by the wake effect, information on the thrust force, or widely used thrust coefficient (Ct), is required. Unlike power curves, Ct curves for the whole range of operating wind speeds of a WTG are still scarcely available in open sources. Typically, power and Ct curves are requested from a WTG manufacturer or wind farm owner under a non-disclosure agreement. However, in a research study or in calculations over a multitude of wind farms with a variety of wind turbine models, collecting this information from owners may be hardly possible. This study represents a simple method to define Ct curve statistically using power curve and general specifications of WTGs available in open sources. Preliminary results demonstrate reasonable correspondence between simulated and given data. The estimations are done in the context of aggregated wind power calculations based on reanalysis or forecast data, so that the uncertainty of wake wind speed caused by the uncertainty of predicted Ct is comparable, or do not exceed, the uncertainty of given wind speed. Although the method may not provide accurate fits at low wind speeds, it represents an essential alternative to using physical Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models that are both more demanding to computer resources and require detailed information on the geometry of the rotor blades and physical properties of the rotor, which are even more unavailable in open sources than power curves.

How to cite: Atlaskin, E., Suomi, I., and Lindfors, A.: Statistical calculation of thrust curve of a wind turbine based on available power curve and general specifications data, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-14402, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14402, 2021.

Solar Photovoltaic (PV) has the potential to fulfill a considerable amount of growing electricity demands worldwide.  In addition, being neat and clean, it can help to keep the greenhouse gases emission within safe limits. This resource needs a substantial amount of area for its sitting to supply the required amount of electricity. Such an area mainly depends on the available solar resource which is mainly the function of the local environment where PV is installed. Although some previous studies exist at the global scale, however, they have not comprehensively considered environmental (e.g., temperature, dust deposition, and snow) limiting factors that affect the actual solar PV yield. This study addresses such shortcomings and deals with all limiting factors simultaneously to provide a reliable assessment of potential PV performance at a global scale. PV cell efficiency is reduced due to an increase in resistance between cells at a temperature above a certain limit. Meanwhile, the accumulation of soil (dust) and snow on PV modules are also proven to limit the solar PV resources as it tends to block the incoming solar radiation. Lastly, the geomorphological parameter, which is an arrangement of a PV module to face the sun, is also shown to change its power output.

PV cell efficiency corrections for temperature changes, soil, and snow covers are applied using the biased corrected data from Global Soil Wetness Project 3 (GWSP3), CanSISE Observation-Based Ensemble of Northern Hemisphere Terrestrial Snow Water Equivalent, Version 2 from National Snow and Ice Data Center (nsidc), and TERRA/MODIS Aerosol Optical Thickness data available from NASA Earth Observations (NEO). The daily mean solar climatological values near the Earth’s surface for the last 14 years (2001–2014) with global coverage of 0.5º x0.5º are used in the analysis. The results have demonstrated that PV performance is affected by temperature increase, soil, snow, and varying tilt-angles. An annual maximum reduction of 5.7% in the total solar PV resource is seen in the Middle East due to the temperature changes. Likewise, a maximum loss of 6.45% in the total solar PV resource is witnessed for soil deposition for Sub-Saharan Africa. A higher reduction (~20%) is shown by snow covers for Russia and Canada in the upper Northern Hemisphere. In addition, a decline of 5–7% is observed for variation in the solar PV tilt-angles in comparison to optimum ones. As a whole, a maximum reduction of 19.45% in the total solar PV resource is found, which leads to a higher coefficient of determination (R²= 0.78) than uncorrected estimation (R²=0.67). This study will be helpful for household as well as large scale solar schemes and may contribute particularly to achieving the UN SDG No. 07 — Affordable and Clean Energy — and No. 13 — Climate Action — quantitatively.

How to cite: Ali, M. and Kim, H.: Global assessment for reduction of solar photovoltaic potential due to meteorological and geomorphological limiting factors, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-5773, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-5773, 2021.

This work considers photovoltaic solar energy as an alternative to promote the diversification of the energy matrix and contribute to improving access to the citizens of Medellín (MMA) Metropolitan Area,  Colombia. The objective is a more sustainable and resilient energy use.  To achieve this, we assess how much of the energy demand can be generated within the city, integrated into the urban morphology at the roofs of existing buildings. We use meteorological information and power measurements from three experimental solar panels. We analyze the photovoltaic energy potential in these Representative Urban Areas (RUA) and provide information relevant to the whole Valley's context to guide sustainable and resilient energy planning.  One particular result is about the energy reduction factor due to cloudiness, which quantifies how energy would vary under the region's cloud conditions.

How to cite: Correa Sánchez, N., Mesa Sánchez, O. J., and Hoyos Ortíz, C. D.: Estimation of photovoltaic energy generated in urban environments, case: Medellín Metropolitan Area (MMA) (Colombia), EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-15214, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-15214, 2021.

Monitoring and forecasting cloud coverage is crucial for nowcasting and forecasting of solar irradiance reaching the earth surface, and it’s a powerful tool for solar energy exploitation systems.

In this study, we focused on the assessment of a newly developed short-term (up to 3h) forecasting system of Downwelling Surface Solar Irradiation (DSSI) in a large spatial scale (Europe and North Africa). This system forecasts the future cloud position by calculating Cloud Motion Vectors (CMV) using Cloud Optical Thickness (COT) data derived from multispectral images from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) onboard the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellite and an optical flow motion estimation technique from the computer vision community. Using as input consecutive COT images, CMVs are calculated and cloud propagation is performed by applying them to the latest COT image. Using the predicted COT images, forecasted DSSI is calculated using Fast Radiative Transfer Models (FRTM) in high spatial (5 km over nadir) and temporal resolution (15 min time intervals intervals).

A first evaluation of predicted COT has been conducted, by comparing the predicted cloud parameter of COT with real observed values derived by the MSG/SEVIRI. Here, the DSSI is validated against ground-based measurements from three Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) stations, for the year 2017. Also, a sensitivity analysis of the effect on DSSI for different cloud and aerosol conditions is performed, to ensure reliability under different sky and climatological conditions.

The DSSI short-term forecasting system proposed, complements the existing short-term forecasting techniques and it is suitable for operational deployment of solar energy related systems

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the EuroGEO e-shape (grant agreement No 820852).

How to cite: Papachristopoulou, K., Fountoulakis, I., Kosmopoulos, P., Kouroutsidis, D., Raptis, P. I., Kontoes, C., Hatzaki, M., and Kazadzis, S.: Assessment of a newly developed short-term forecasting system (nextSENSE) of Downwelling Surface Solar Irradiance (DSSI) and validation with ground-based measurements, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-7218, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-7218, 2021.

How to cite: Bellinguer, K., Girard, R., Bontron, G., and Kariniotakis, G.: Assessment of Alternative Ways to Integrate Weather Predictions in Photovoltaic Generation Forecasting. , EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-16091, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-16091, 2021.

Due to global warming and the worldwide depletion of fossil fuel resources, there is a growing need to transform the energy system toward greater use of renewable sources. In Poland, poor air quality constitutes an additional argument for the necessity of such transition. High levels of pollutants concentrations in many locations, especially in urban and suburban areas are caused by emissions from individual heating systems running on fossil fuels.

Data from recent years show that renewable generation forms the largest share of the total generation mix in Europe. Regarding new installation, solar and wind energy dominate renewable capacity expansion, jointly accounting for example in 2019 for 90% of all net renewable additions. However, along with the increase in the penetration of these energy sources also increases the sensitivity of the power system to weather and climatic conditions.

The study presents the impact of climate change up to the year 2100 on the photovoltaic power generation potential (Pvpot) in Poland. For determination of Pvpot index a set of high-resolution climate models projections, made available within the EURO-CORDEX initiative was used. Maps showing spatial distribution of absolute values of Pvpot in future climate (30-year average for 2071-2100) and relative changes with respect to current climate (30-year average for 2006-2035) are presented, separately for RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenario. The influence of meteorological conditions (temperature, wind and solar radiation) on PV module performance is taken into account by applying two different formula (Ciulla et. al, 2014 and Davy and Troccoli, 2012). Furthermore, two options for module orientation are considered: horizontal and inclined at an optimal angle.

How to cite: Zdunek, M.: Climate change impact on photovoltaic potential in Poland, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-13850, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-13850, 2021.