When forests regrow: ERC Starting Grant for sustainability researcher Simone Gingrich

In many industrialised countries, forests are starting to regrow after centuries or millennia of large-scale deforestation. This appears positive for the global climate system, because forests sequester carbon that would otherwise accumulate in the atmosphere. However, forest regrowth may not necessarily be a viable strategy for climate-change mitigation. Simone Gingrich has been awarded a prestigious ERC Starting Grant and plans to use it to identify and analyse the “hidden emissions” of reforestation processes.

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Many routes lead to an overview image: Path planning for drone swarms

A forest is ablaze: Before the fire service can even commence fire-fighting operations, an overview is required. This could be an opportunity for the deployment of drone swarms, dispatched to survey the affected area from the air and to take photos. But how do the drones know which paths they should ideally survey? Jürgen Scherer is working on improving the process of path planning for drone swarms.

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Efficient and intelligent: Drones get to grips with planning the delivery of goods


When goods are needed urgently, for instance, in rural areas poorly served by transport infrastructure, or in large, heavily congested cities, they could be delivered by drones. In 2013, Amazon was one of the first to declare the intention to work towards the automated delivery of goods by small autonomous helicopters. A multi-disciplinary research team at the Alpen-Adria-Universität assembled by Christian Bettstetter and Friederike Wall is due to deliver initial insights on the efficient operation of (self-organised) delivery of goods. Doctoral student Pasquale Grippa will present the results at the conference “Robotics: Science and Systems”, which is scheduled to take place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from July 12th.

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Current insights into social ecology: special issue of the journal ‚Sustainability‘ published

In the last decades social ecology has made important contributions to sustainability research. As the science of societal relationship to nature it evolved in the late 1980s. Today, the approach that understands complex environmental problems to be rooted in the critical relationship between society and nature is regarded to be fundamental for research dealing with sustainable development. Now, with a special issue of the renowned international journal ‘Sustainability’ a comprehensive insight is given to the state of the art of social-ecological research.

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