500.KNAW-symposium: Het nieuwe s - Ab Osterhaus VogelGriep en Zoogdieren

Recent nam ook het aantal meldingen van infecties van wilde zoogdieren toe. Inmiddels gaat het om meer dan 30 soorten. In nertsen en diverse zeezoogdieren was er zelfs sprake van grootschalige overdracht tussen zoogdieren. Deze bevindingen benadrukken dat het virus de mogelijkheid heeft om zich aan te passen aan zoogdieren en overdraagbaar te worden. Gelukkig wordt op dit moment het risico voor mensen nog niet hoog ingeschat.

Tijdens deze bijeenkomst lichten de sprekers recente ontwikkelingen toe in de HPAI-uitbraken in wilde vogels, pluimvee, mensen en andere zoogdieren, met focus op Nederland. Daarbij staan ze stil bij de interventie-opties die beschikbaar zijn om de gezondheid van dieren en mensen te borgen, en de moeilijkheden rondom deze interventie-opties.

Het H5N1-vogelgriepvirus heeft inmiddels de sprong gemaakt van vogels en pluimvee naar diverse zoogdieren en heeft zich ook verspreid naar andere delen van de wereld. Wat zijn de laatste ontwikkelingen rond vogelgriep? Welke opties zijn er om de gezondheid van dieren en mensen te borgen, en wat zijn hierbij de risico’s?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw05RxiAhsQ&list=PLvIjtWk34TjU7PIETZiz2gfj6BTeLVWg8

This talk will discuss McGregor's doctoral research which focused on three main topics: 1) a novel, NRT detection algorithm that was created to explicitly assess multiple spectra of trade-offs; 2) landscape processes that were incorporated into the algorithm using a Bayesian approach; and 3) an expansion of the methodology used to develop a continuously-improving model by integrating input from in-situ users.

https://www.caryinstitute.org/events/fallen-trees-and-coding-dreams-or-near-real-time-deforestation-monitoring

Tijdens het webinar zijn er veel vragen gesteld. Binnenkort ontvangt u de antwoorden op de meest gestelde vragen per mail. Voor meer informatie verwijzen we u graag door naar onze website.

VogelGriep en Zoogdieren

Via onderstaande knop kunt u het webinar VogelGriep en Zoogdieren terugkijken.

▶ https://lnkd.in/ernUR48c
https://www.rug.nl/rudolf-agricola-school/news-and-events/2023/special-issue-journal-of-wetland-archaeology-co-edited-by-tymon-de-haas-and-mans-schepers

Journal of Wetland Archaeology, Volume 22, Issue 1-2 (2022), ‘Between reclamation and restoration: the archaeology, historical ecology and future development of reclaimed wetland landscapes.’

Editorial
the editorial can be found here.

Journal of Wetland Archeology
Journal of Wetland Archeology
Comparing Europe and America
The papers in this special issue explore the archaeology and historical ecology of wetland environments in various parts of Europe and northern America. These environments all have in common that they have been reclaimed at one or multiple moments in their history, and that these reclamations have shaped the subsequent development of the landscape and environment.

Besides showing the historical depth and variability of wetland reclamation, the papers also reflect upon the need for wetland environments globally to be restored in order to combat two of the key challenges of the Anthropocene – climate change and biodiversity declines.

This is the contribution by dr.Tymon de Haas and dr. Mans Schepers, in which they compare the diachronic development of two reclaimed wetland landscapes in the Netherlands (de Onlanden in Groningen) and Italy (the Pontine Plain):
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/yjwa20/22/1-2
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14732971.2022.2072097
Wetland reclamation has occurred under diverse geographic and socio-political conditions. A single reclamation event however, forms only one step in the evolution of what we refer to as reclamation landscapes. This paper assesses how interacting physical geographical, cultural and biological processes shape the landscape diachronically. Using a triangular model, we compare two wetland landscapes: the Pontine marshes in central Italy, reclaimed as part of Rome’s early Imperial expansion; and the Onlanden area in the northern Netherlands, reclaimed by emergent state societies in the Middle Ages. Reclamation turned out not fully resilient from a cultural perspective in both cases, as physical geographical and biological processes continued to raise challenges in both reclamation landscapes. It is argued that the triangular model offers potential to systematically explore the drivers behind landscape evolution comparatively. A better understanding of such drivers may in turn improve current landscape management policies, including rewilding efforts.

The Reclamation Landscapes of the Onlanden (Northern Netherlands) and Pontine Marshes (Central Italy): A Short Introduction
The two reclamation landscapes that are object of study are the Pontine marshes in central Tyrrhenian Italy, and the Onlanden in the northern Netherlands (Figure 2). Both areas are characterized by an extensive and ongoing research history, which includes various types of archaeological, palaeo-environmental, and geological studies. Both these areas specifically serve as examples of well-studied reclamation landscapes and we heavily rely on previously published work by ourselves and others for this paper. For more detailed information, as well as the source data underlying various aspects discussed here, we refer to the original sources.

The Onlanden are located in the Northern Netherlands, on the border between the provinces of Groningen and Drenthe. The area is divided in a number of sub-regions, largely determined by its reclamation history. In this contribution, we will primarily focus on the area known as the Roderwolderpolder. This relatively low-lying area has a diverse ecological history, but has been ‘wet’ in varying, and relevant, degrees throughout history. The southern part of the area consists primarily of peat soils. These occur in the Northern area as well, but there these have been covered by younger, clay sediments. The hydrological and pedological conditions of the area explain the name Onlanden, which literally translates to ‘bad lands’. No actual settlements developed within the reclaimed area, but villages do occur on higher sandy outcrops around it. The most important of these is the city of Groningen, which over time has expanded significantly and now borders the area. The expansion of the Medieval town of Groningen probably triggered the intensification of the exploitation and reclamation of the Onlanden in the Middle Ages. It has long been known that numerous raised homesteads or small dwelling mounds occur in the area that date back to this period. A major field-work project focusing on the aforementioned Roderwolderpolder was carried out from 2008 to 2011, resulting in an extensive edited volume that is the basis for the present analysis (Nicolay Citation2018a).1This is published in Dutch, but English summaries are provided for all chapters. This project followed the intended transformation of the area from an agricultural area, into an area used simultaneously for (wetland) nature development and water retention.

To counterbalance the problem of urban overheating, numerous heat mitigation systems and technologies are proposed, and implemented in more than 250 large scale urban projects. Mitigation policies and technologies aim to strengthen the cooling potential of heat sinks and weaken the intensity of the heat sources. Among the developed mitigation technologies, the use of advanced, materials like the recently developed photonic components and the reflective, cool materials, the implementation of additional greenery in buildings and open spaces, the use of passive evaporative systems involving additional irrigation of urban zones and finally the dissipation of the excess heat into the ground seems to provide higher mitigation potential.

Bats use echolocation with ultrasound and use frequencies from 12 to 125kHz. Most bats, however can be detected, if you use a sample rate of 192ksps, that means the usable upper limit frequency is < 96kHz, which is quite nice and covers the vast majority of the bat species occuring worldwide (with the exception of most horseshoe bats). [Audio frequencies > 96kHz are very heavily attenuated in the air anyway, so you would have to be very close to a bat calling at 100kHz (a few meters!) to detect it]: --> so, I think a bat detector detecting frequencies < 96kHz is a very useful thing.

It would be very cool, if we could use the basic Teensy 3.5/3.6 [sorry, probably not possible with Teensy 3.2 and smaller] with its Teensy audio shield plus an electret mic (those tiny little ones) without further hardware to detect bats!

First, I think, we have to look at some basic questions, before starting to program the Teensy:

the samples come in such a high rate from the audio lib in that sample rate, that we can only do some very light audio processing, we have only (128/192000) = 667µsec for a block of 128 samples. [FFT256point should be possible, but a 512point or 1024point FFT is probably not possible]
Is there an analog anti-alias filter in front of the ADC of the SGTL5000 Teensy audio board? If yes, we do not need to work any further in this thread, because that would make it impossible for us to process audio > 48kHz through the audio board.
To lower the processor usage, we could do the following: sample at 192ksps, decimate the audio, process the audio, and interpolate.
Zoom FFT: To get high resolution to look at the bat calls, we need many many points in the FFT, > 1024. That is of course not possible in that high sampling rate, even with the fast Teensy 3.6. We could use a technique called Zoom FFT to have a detailed look at only a small portion of the frequency spectrum with a small FFT (say 256 points). ZOOM_FFT
Before doing all that, a first start could be: get the audio at 196ksps (queue object) --> software DDS or sinewave object with user adjustable frequency (12 – 96kHz) --> multiply that with the incoming audio --> hear batsound at 0-20kHz : that is called a heterodyne detector

What do you think about this? Any answers to the above questions or any further suggestions/ideas greatly acknowledged!
https://www.teensybat.com/
https://forum.pjrc.com/threads/38988-Bat-detector

Vlaanderen heeft een stikstofoverschot: meer dan 80 % van onze (vaak Europees beschermde) natuur lijdt eronder.

Jos Ramaekers (Natuurpunt) gaat in deze lezing dieper in op de problematiek van het stikstofoverschot, de gevolgen ervan voor de biodiversiteit en mogelijke oplossingen.
https://www.provinciaalnatuurcentrum.be/nieuws/herbekijk-pnc-in-dialoog-stikstof

insdag 10 oktober 2023: Bomen, ons erfgoed – Kathleen De Clercq, lector groenmanagement, hogeschool PXL

De oudste bewoner in elke gemeente is een boom of zou dat moeten zijn. Maar hoe gaan we om met die oudjes, respecteren we hen wel voldoende? Respect begint bij herkenning, gevolgd door erkenning of waardering. We laten onze inheemse boomsoorten niet altijd uitgroeien tot bomen. Niettemin zijn kaphagen, knotvormen, berceaus en hagen wel degelijk volwaardige bomen die we tot ons groen erfgoed kunnen rekenen. Samen met Kathleen De Clercq trachten we te begrijpen waarom we vroeger knotten, hakten, kapten en vlechtten en achterhalen we of dat beheer nu nog mogelijk en zinvol is.

Donderdag 16 november 2023: Boomstad, de stad tussen de bomen – Roeland Samson, hoogleraar bio-ingenieurswetenschappen, Universiteit Antwerpen

Steden staan steeds meer onder druk door klimaatverandering en vervuiling, en dit ten nadele van de mensen die er wonen. Nochtans kunnen steden bijdragen tot het verlagen van onze ecologische voetafdruk. In deze grijze stressvolle omgeving is de nood aan groen bijzonder hoog. Bij het aanplanten van dat groen wordt vaak te weinig rekening gehouden met plantenwelzijn. Dit resulteert in bomen en groen onder stress, soms met de dood tot gevolg.
Mensen en bomen hebben elkaar nodig. Roeland Samson toont met deze lezing aan waarom mensen en bomen samen de stad van de toekomst moeten maken. Een stad tussen de bomen…
https://issuu.com/provincie_limburg/docs/0025_limburgnatuurlijk_2023

Na deze reeks breng jij het klimaatverhaal pakkend, overtuigend én wetenschappelijk correct. Interesse in de hele reeks of één enkele sessie? Jij kiest en stelt zelf je programma samen.

Volgende thema’s komen aan bod:

Donderdag 23 maart 2023: Weer en klimaat – Samuel Helsen, weerman, klimaatwetenschapper en geograaf, KULeuven
Maandag 27 maart 2023: Gevolgen van klimaatverandering voor flora en fauna – Prof. dr. Natalie Beenaerts, UHasselt
Donderdag 20 april 2023: Oplossingen voor de klimaat- en biodiversiteitscrisis – Benno Geertsma, Natuuracademie
Donderdag 27 april 2023: Hoe breng je het verhaal van klimaatverandering? - Steven Vromman, Eco-comedian en auteur
Je kiest zelf of je één of meerdere lezingen volgt.

Ben je al educatieve gids bij het Provinciaal Natuurcentrum en volg je de vier lezingen, dan kan je aan de slag als klimaatgids!
https://www.provinciaalnatuurcentrum.be/kalender/activiteit/pnc-in-dialoog-klimaat
Weer en klimaat – Samuel Helsen, weerman, klimaatwetenschapper en geograaf, KULeuven

Lezing gemist? Herbekijk de presentaties of bekijk de opname van de lezing