Inhalt

VGöD - Intern

• Bundesfachschaftentagung der Geoökologie in Freiberg - von Elisabeth Schüppel
• Neue Homepage seit Juli online - von Dieter Eickhoff
• Neues Erscheinungsbild des VGöD - von Dieter Eickhoff
• Neuigkeiten von der Fachgruppe Geoökologie in Freiberg - von Elisabeth Schüppel
• Einladung zur Jahreshauptversammlung in Rastatt

Schwerpunkt: Transport Phenomena and the limits of life in the Biosphere

• Introduction
• The Lectures
• The Format
• The Autors: J.J. Finnigan, K. Jensen, G.G. Katul, W. Konrad, C. Manes, S. Manzoni, M. Mauder, N. Ruehr, H.P. Schmid
• "Piling grains of knowledge" A student perspective of the course - von Matti Räsänen

Geoökologie

• GeoökologInnen erzählen - Interview mit Boris Schröder-Esselbach
• Masterstudierende berichten - Interview mit Hanna Hartmann
• Hydrologisch-Wasserwirtschaftliche Tagung (HYWATA)- von Jennifer Krutzke
• Auf den Spuren der portugiesischen Korkeichen-Montados - von Marcus Wildner
• ifeu - Institut für Energie- und Umweltforschung Heidelberg GmbH

Neues aus Forschung und Praxis

• Gemeinsam ins Grüne - Naturerlebnis und Umweltbildung mit Geflüchteten - von Larissa Donges
• Carbon, CFK, Kohlefaser - von Frank Manis und Jakob Wölling

Kolumne

• Natur- und Umwelterbe 2017 - Andrea Mehling

Transport Phenomena and the limits of life in the Biosphere

The term »biosphere« refers to the region within the Earth‘s surface where life dwells. Since its inception in 1875, this concept has launched one of the most ambitious interdisciplinary collaborative efforts in science. It has forged partnerships between atmospheric sciences, biology, chemistry, climate, ecology, enginee-ring, geology, geography, hydrology, mathematics, and physics. It is now widely accepted that a holistic perspective to describe the macroscopic dynamics of life in the biosphere should be traced to how the biotic and abiotic worlds interact and commu-nicate with each other. Such interactions span a broad range of spatial and temporal scales with rich cross-scale information flows often manifesting themselves in coherent spatial and temporal patterns, adaptive dynamics,emergence of complex behaviors and networks, or appearance of engineered features that provide evolutionary advantages to the many life forms. While all aspects of such interactions and their consequences for unfolding the physical, chemical, biological, eco-logical, and social laws of the biosphere are beyond the scope of a single course, there are opportunities for fruitful cross-fertilization between fluid dynamics and its application to the biosphere. This course aims to illustrate progress and opportunities in this particular area. The lecturers covered fundamentals and principles of air and water movement wit-hin the biosphere, elaborate on key applications spanning subsurface water movement, the soil-plant system, xylem-phloem transport in plants, air flow in the lower atmosphere, and fish movement. The common theme weaving all the lectures is that fluid flow exerts significant controls on the form and function of the biosphere. The limits of life, as we know it in the biosphere, may well be governed by just a few dimensionless parameters to be elaborated upon in these lectures. The lectures are supplemented with modeling projects supervised by various instructors. These mini-projects were carried out by stu-dent groups and spanned topics such as the dynamical interaction between humans and the biosphere, the delays in the climate-energy-human system, self-organized critically in turbulent flow time series, land management and its effects on the hydrological cycle, and land-atmosphere interactions. There are four parts to this course. The first two parts cover fundamentals of slow- and fast-moving fluids (labeled as low- and high Reynolds numbers), while the second two parts explores fruitful cross-fertilization between such fluid movement and the biosphere (terrestrial and aquatic).