Klimaat In Ruimtelijke Keuzes: Het Dialoogondersteunend Afwegingskader (DAK)

Het doel van het HSHL01 project ‘Klimaat in ruimtelijke keuzes’ is om een dialoog ondersteunend afwegingskader (DAK) te ontwikkelen en toe te passen. Met dit afwegingskader kunnen de betrokken partijen gezamenlijk de lange termijn effecten van klimaatverandering op het waterbeheer in een vroegtijdig stadium en op inzichtelijke wijze meewegen in het proces van ruimtelijke planvorming. Het gaat hierbij zowel om de locatiekeuze van ruimtelijke ontwikkelingen als de inrichting van eenmaal gekozen woningbouwlocaties, bedrijventerreinen en glastuinbouwlocaties

Nutritional correlates of koala persistence in a low-density population

It is widely postulated that nutritional factors drive bottom-up, resource-based patterns in herbivore ecology and distribution. There is, however, much controversy over the roles of different plant constituents and how these influence individual herbivores and herbivore populations. The density of koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) populations varies widely and many attribute population trends to variation in the nutritional quality of the eucalypt leaves of their diet, but there is little evidence to support this hypothesis. We used a nested design that involved sampling of trees at two spatial scales to investigate how leaf chemistry influences free-living koalas from a low-density population in south east New South Wales, Australia. Using koala faecal pellets as a proxy for koala visitation to trees, we found an interaction between toxins and nutrients in leaves at a small spatial scale, whereby koalas preferred trees with leaves of higher concentrations of available nitrogen but lower concentrations of sideroxylonals (secondary metabolites found exclusively in eucalypts) compared to neighbouring trees of the same species. We argue that taxonomic and phenotypic diversity is likely to be important when foraging in habitats of low nutritional quality in providing diet choice to tradeoff nutrients and toxins and minimise movement costs. Our findings suggest that immediate nutritional concerns are an important priority of folivores in low-quality habitats and imply that nutritional limitations play an important role in constraining folivore populations. We show that, with a careful experimental design, it is possible to make inferences about populations of herbivores that exist at extremely low densities and thus achieve a better understanding about how plant composition influences herbivore ecology and persistence.IW and WF received a grant from New South Wales (NSW) Department of Environment, Climate Change & Water

Design of floodproof urban riverfronts

Aim of the PhD research is to find a solution for the difficulties in improving the flood protection structures and the redevelopment of an urban riverfront in the shared realm. The question is if it is possible to create and maintain synergy in an urban riverfront between the technical function of flood protection and urban functions, taking economic development and physical processes, such as climate change, into account. This research mainly focuses on the municipalities and water boards of the Dutch Rhinedelta. Two directions have been looked at in order to find an answer to the question asked above. The first direction looks at physical synergy between different functions, which is described in part 2 of the thesis, and the second direction looks at synergy in the process of (re)development of an urban riverfront, which is described in part 3 of the thesis. Part 4 of the thesis evaluates both directions. The PhD research demonstrates that it is possible to create and maintain physical synergy by applying the newly developed concept of adaptable flood defences (the AFD concept) and that it is possible to create synergy in the (re)design process by consulting the newly developed web-based decision support tool ‘Urban Flood Protection Matrix’ (UFPM tool). A pilot version of this tool is currently available at http://www.urbanriverfronts.com.Hydraulic EngineeringCivil Engineering and Geoscience

Waterkering in de stad. IJsselzone binnenstad ¿ Deventer

Civil Engineering and Geoscience

Schematic of nested sampling design with tree and plot categories.

<p>Experimental sampling design showing the tree and plot categories. At Occupied Plots, trees visited by koalas (A) were grouped with one nearby and similar tree that had not been visited (B) and with one nearby tree of a different subgenus (C). Then, at a matched Unoccupied Plot, leaves were collected from a tree of the same species (D) and one of a different subgenus (E) to Category A trees.</p

Summary of REML model results for statistically significant foliar attributes in trees of the subgenus <i>Symphyomyrtus</i>.

†<p>P-values that were statistically significant at P<0.05 are marked with asterisks.</p><p>Summary of REML model results for statistically significant foliar attributes in trees of the subgenus <i>Symphyomyrtus</i>.</p