New Publication

 

J.H. Breuste, M. Artmann, C. Ioja, S. Qureshi (Eds.) (2019): Making Green CitiesConcepts, Challenges and Practice, Series: Cities and Nature

  • Provides an interdisciplinary overview of best practices and challenges
  • Includes structured international case studies
  • Provides an introduction on culture, preexisting nature conditions, existing urban surrounding, history, design and planning

 

This book shows what role nature can play in a city and how this can make it a better place for people to live. People, planners, designers and politicians are working towards the development of green cities. Some cities are already promoted as green cities, while others are on their way to become one. But their goals are often unclear and can include different facets. Presenting contributions from world leading researchers in the field of urban ecology, the editors provide an interdisciplinary overview of best practices and challenges in creating green cities. They show examples of how to build up these cities from bits and pieces to districts and urban extensions. Each example concludes with a summary of the collected knowledge, the learning points and how this can be used in other places. The best practices are collected from around the world – Europe, Australia, America and Asia. The new dynamic urban development of Asia is illustrated by case studies from China and the Indian subcontinent. The reader will learn which role nature can play in green cities and what the basic requirements are in terms of culture, pre-existing nature conditions, existing urban surroundings, history, design and planning.

 


The UNESCO Global Geoparks Council has approved the revalidation of Ore of the Alps as a UNESCO Global Geopark

UNESCO Global Geoparks explore, develop and celebrate the links between their geological heritage and all other aspects of their natural and cultural heritage. They reconnect human society with the history of our planet across 4,600 million years that have shaped every place on Earth and all life that has ever lived here.

Prof. Breuste is a scientific partner of the Geopark and was involved in numerous activities of the Geopark in the last years.  He also was involved in the preparation and implementation of the certification defense. The UNESCO Global Geopark is partner of this year’s Summer School (7-14 July) in Salzburg. On Friday the 12th of July, the UNESCO Global Geopark will be visited in a field of excursion by our international participants and lecturers.

Program Summer School

Research and qualification work on the Geopark will be continued. Interest from the Salzburg students is welcome. Please contact Prof. Breuste.

Certificate UNESCO Global Geopark


Honorary professorship of the ECNU Shanghai awarded to Univ.-Prof. Dr. Jürgen Breuste

Univ. Dr. Jürgen Breuste, Department of Geography and Geology, Chair of Urban and Landscape Ecology, was awarded a honorary professorship by the East China Normal University Shanghai (ECNU) on April 19, 2019 in Shanghai, China. The award was presented by Prof. Ding Pingxing, Director of the Faculty of Earth Science on behalf of University President Prof. Dr. med. Chen Qun and took place in the context of a ceremony. Prof. Breuste would like to thank the numerous employees and students of the School of Ecological and Environmental Sciences with a lecture on the results of his urban ecology research.

Univ. Breuste has been working in research and teaching since 2009 in close cooperation with the School of Ecological and Environmental Sciences and its director Prof. Dr. med. Junxiang Li. From 2009 to 2015, he was Visiting Professor and was appointed to ECNU as a professor of „Urban Ecology“ as part of a government program for 2015-2017. Univ.-Prof. Dr.  Breuste supervised numerous students from Austria and China in her qualification work cooperatively with Prof. Li, conducted several international summer schools and field trips in Shanghai, conducted research with Chinese and international partners on the urban ecology of the Shanghai agglomeration and on ecosystem services and biodiversity of urban nature. International journal articles and book contributions together with Chinese partners.

Picture: Prof. Ding Pingxing, Director of the Faculty of Earth Science, ECNU, Shanghai left, Univ.-Prof. Breuste right.

 


Ecological Society of America’s Sustainability Science Award 2019

The article „Advancing Urban Ecology toward a Science of Cities“ by McPhearson T. et al. has been selected to receive the Ecological Society of America’s 2019 Sustainability Science Award.

This award is given to the authors (Univ.-Prof. DDr. Jürgen Breuste as co-author) of a peer-reviewed paper published in the past five years that exemplifies leading edge work on solution pathways to sustainability challenges. The award recognizes that the application of sustainability science is enabled by linking ecological science with advances in other biophysical disciplines, engineering, the social sciences (e.g. economics, anthropology, public policy, governance), and other fields. The award recognizes higher risk ideas that are yet to be fully tested but hold great promise for achieving a sustainable world.

Publication here


 

Guest scientist Mister Ruiming MA

Since October 2018 is Mister Ruiming Ma (Master of engineering of China University of Geosciences, Beijing) of the China Agricultural University, College of Land Science and Technology, in the frame of a scholarship of the China Scholarship Council for one year as guest scientist in the Research Group Urban and Landscape Ecology. He works on a Ph.D thesis: “Study on the potential calculation of rural residential areas based on spatial differences” and will especially study the ecosystem service approach for urban framing and gardening on Salzburg examples.

 


SUNRAISE – SURE Summer School URBAN + MOUNTAINS
7th – 21th of July 2019 – 
Salzburg, Austria

By the University of Salzburg, Austria, in cooperation with the Society for Urban Ecology (SURE)

The Summer School is organized under the Erasmus+ projects «Systems for Monitoring and Responses to Early Warnings»

The summer school is organized by the University of Salzburg (Austria) and the Society for Urban Ecology (SURE) in cooperation with Austrian and international partners. It aims at exploring human and environmental challenges and finding solutions for these. The Alps, Europe’s highest mountain system, serve as the perfect study area for this purpose. The school will include training on research methodology and group work on various research projects. The research part will be in connection of the Summer School from 15th till 21st of July.

Further information here

No fees for the lectures of the Summer School. Accommodation has to be paid individually.

How to apply

In order to participate on the Summer School, you need to submit a short CV and motivation letter.

The application deadline is March, 15th 2019

Application:

Petra Proell BSc,

petra.proell@sbg.ac.at

University of Salzburg, Urban landscape ecology

Summer School academic director:

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Jürgen Breuste

juergen.breuste@sbg.ac.at

University of Salzburg, Leader of the research group Urban landscape ecology

 


URBES Project awarded with the Biodiversa Prize for Excellence and Impact 

Urban Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

URBES addresses significant scientific knowledge gaps on the role of urban biodiversity and ecosystem services for human well-being. This is of importance for building the ability of European cities to adapt to climate change and reduce their ecological footprints. URBES focuses particularly on functional diversity, urban ecosystem services, institutions, economics, and resilience science. It strives to translate cross disciplinary research insights into principles, land use scenarios, landscape designs and applications. In addition, URBES pioneers the development of the TEEB approach in an urban context. This project is innovative in integrating monetary and nonmonetary valuation techniques. It also studies the implications that these results might have on governance, and develops guidelines for implementation in urban landscapes. In 2018 this URBES Project ist awarded with the Biodiversa Prize for Excellence and Impact.

Duration: 2012-2014
Parnter: 13 (from Finland [self-financed], Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, USA [self-financed]

URBES Publications

 


sunraise03cPrint

SUNRAISE – SUSTAINABLE NATURAL RESOURCE USE IN ARCTIC AND HIGH MOUNTAINOUS AREAS

SUNRAISE IS AN ERASMUS + (CAPACITY BUILDING IN HIGHER EDUCATION) PROJECT THAT PROMOTES SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT OF ARCTIC AND HIGH MOUNTAIN ECOSYSTEMS IN BHUTAN, INDIA AND RUSSIA.

Project Leader: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Jürgen Breuste

Duration: 2017-2020

Funding: EU (Erasmus +)

SUNRAISE is a 36 months (2017-2020) Erasmus+ project that aims to promote sustainable management of Arctic and highmountainous ecosystems in Bhutan, India and Russia (partner countries – PCs) through enhanced tertiary education linked tolabour markets and wider stakeholder circles. This aim will be achieved through the following objectives:

1. To revise and upgrade selected BSc, MSc & PhD programs in PC higher education institutions to make them end-user- oriented& policy-relevant, and enhance opportunities for life long learning (LLL) education.

2. To develop SUNRAISE open education environment Platform (SUNRAISER) and online training services of the new generation(MOOC) for qualitative improvement of the education process and academic workflow support among universities andstakeholders across the PC and EU Member States.

3. To create sustainable feedback mechanisms to end-users, ensuring adaptive and practice-relevant teaching contents,knowledge co-production opportunities and stakeholder support to post-project course development and teaching.

4. To develop capacity for academic mobility, shared experimental facilities and joint research by PIs and beyond.

Achieving of these objectives will significantly enhance the quality of educational provision in partner countries, as the expertiseof the whole consortium will become available to individual and group learners (including the students from other programs and,in particular, the learners from remote regions). PhD students will access research facilities at other partner countries throughjoint research arrangements and benefit from new methods and richer data for their thesis. Likewise, revision of researchagendas PhD studies and integrating to them emerging problems and methods will build teaching capacity at PC HEIs andmotivate business and policy actors to engage in closer cooperation. The proposed vehicles for such engagement are national(Russia) and regional (India & Bhutan) SUNRAISE sector collaborative platforms to be set-up for the Arctic and HighMountainous Areas to create a “community of practice”.

The project partners:

Russia

  • Russian State Hydrometeorological University, St.-Petersburg
  • Gorno-Altaisk State University, Gorno-Altaisk
  • Siberian Federal University, Krasnoyarsk
  • NGO Altai-Sayan Mountain Partnership, Gorno-Altajsk

 

EU

  • University of Bremen,Germany – Projekt Koordinator
  • Salzburg University, Austria
  • Estonian Life Science University, Tartu, Estonia
  • Erda Research, Technology, Education, Rijswijk, the Netherlands (Associated Partner)
  • RZ. Research. Management. Communication, Lund, Sweden (Associated Partner)
India

  • Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
  • Kumaun University, Nainital
  • Central Himalayan Environment Association, Nainital

Bhutan

  • Royal University of Bhutan

 

Siehe auch: FacebookErda RTE,

Siberian Federal University

SUNRAISE – Sustainable Natural Resource Usein Arctic and High Mountainous Areas 

Internationale Summer School “Monitoring and early warnings in mountain social-ecological systems”

The Summer School offers PhD/MSc students and junior researchers from universities around the world a chance to study best practices in the field of monitoring and early warnings in rapidly changing social-ecological systems of mountain regions. The school will be co-organised by SUNRAISE in July 15-29, 2018; introductory sessions will start at Siberian Federal University and Stolby Nature Reserve, theoretical and methodological training will take place on Manzherok Camp facilities in the Altai Mountains, and for the field research participants will travel to Lake Teletskoye and Katun Nature Reserve. The latest updates, including the full call for applications, detail description and the application form are available from SFU Summer Programs.  The general application deadline is April 10, 2018, however the participants affiliated to the organisations from SUNRAISE partnership have to apply by March 15, 2018 in order to benefit from the travel support  and other arrangements provided through SUNRAISE.

Read more

Summer School in Salzburg in July 2019

Summer School_July19_Salzburg


 

SURE SUMMER SCHOOL JULY 3-8, 2017 IN SALZBURG

The 6th Summer School, organized by the Society for Urban Ecology (SURE)and in cooperation with the Research group UrbanLandscape Ecology (Univ.-Prof. Dr. Jürgen Breuste), took place at the Natural Sciences Faculty of the University of Salzburg in 2017.

A 5-days course was held on the topic „Sustainable Development in Urban Regions“ which was consisted of a theoretical and practicalpart. In the theoretical part, international lecturers (see link below) held lectures, which gave the participants an insight into thediverse urban ecology approaches worldwide. In addition to the theoretical part of the Summer School several excursions to the cityof Salzburg and a full-day excursion to the 200,000-inhabitant city Linz (capital of the federal state of Upper Austria).

Excursion Linz

Content of the 6th SURE Summer School


2ND SURE WORLD CONFERENCE, 8-10 JULY 2016 IN SHANGHAI: „CHALLENGES FOR URBAN ECOLOGY BY RAPID URBANIZATION AND GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE“

The second Congress was a real success: Nearly 350 participants from more than 20 countries worldwide such as USA, Canada,Argentina, Colombia, UK, Germany, France, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Slovakia, Italy, Japan, Singapore, Pakistan, China,etc. took part in the congress and six distinguished leading scientists on urban ecology and environmental science.

The congress totally received 254 abstracts, 168 oral presentations and 47 poster presentations covering wide research interests inthe field of urban ecology.

During the congress, SURE had an assemblage meeting and completed the election of the new board of executive committee member.Prof. Jürgen Breuste was elected to his second term of the SURE president.


CDZ SYMPOSIUM „NATURE-BASED SOLUTIONS FOR URBAN DEVELOPMENT, RESILIENCE AND ECO-CITIES“ – IN SHANGHAI

The symposium „Nature-based Solutions for Urban Development, Resilience and Eco-Cities “ took place from 5 to 7 July 2017 inShanghai. The symposium was organized by Univ.-Prof. Dr. Jürgen Breuste in cooperation with Prof. Li, East China Normal University,and Prof. Pauleit, Technical University of Munich (TU Munich), in which Ass.-Prof. Dr. Angela Hof attended with a lecture.This was supported by the Chinese-German Center for Science Promotion (CDZ).

The main topics:

1. Benefits of nature in urban development – Urban biodiversity and ecosystem services

2. The urban resilience concept based on urban natural ecosystem responses to external disturbances (e.g. climate change)

3. The eco-city and ecocivilization concept – guidelines for sustainable urban development in Germany and China

4. Urban green-blue infrastructure – Innovative ecological planning instruments to integrate nature-based solutions into urbandevelopment strategies


INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP „URBAN BIODIVERSITY VERSUS FUNCTIONAL DESIGN IN CITIES? – THE CASE OF URBAN TREES“

From June 9 to 10, 2016, an international workshop of the IALE-D Center for Landscape Research (CeLaRe) and the Society for UrbanEcology (SURE) took place at the Department of Geography and Geology of theUniversity of Salzburg. Efficient urban trees are counted as an integral part of climate-friendly urban planning and urban development.* Die Dateien findest du bei den Studienassistenten-Dateien unter Lehre – Summer SchoolThe workshop offered 33 participants composed of 6 countries (Austria, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Italy, Romania) a forum todiscuss numerous challenges of the normative model of sustainable urban tree design. Four keynote lectures and eight lectures aswell as a poster presentation of established experts and junior researchers showed results of predominantly empirical work, whichintensively dealt with the interrelations between ecosystem services and urban tree ecophysiology in the face of climate change.Further the cultural ecosystem services of urban trees and urban ecosystems trees where discussed.


LIANG ZHAO DEFENDS DISSERTATION SUCCESSFUL (UNIVERSITY OF SALZBURG & TU DRESDEN)

After three years of research, Mr. Liang Zhao successfully defended his dissertation „Investigations on urban ecosystem servicesprovided by urban parks and interactions with dwellers in the city center of Shanghai, China“ on June the 3rd, 2016. The work wasjointly developed by Univ.-Prof. Dr. Breuste and Prof. Wende (IÖR Dresden) and defended at the Faculty of Architecture of the TUDresden. This marks another milestone in joint research with the East China Normal University Shanghai on the research area „Urbanecosystem services“.

The results are supported by trainees of the TU Dresden in the degree program Spatial Development and Natural ResourcesManagement, in which Univ.-Prof. Dr. Breuste is a Lecturer in Urban Ecology and is being promoted in Shanghai with the support ofProf. Li (ECNU). It shows the great demand for ecosystem services in the densely populated cities of China as well as in Shanghai(survey results), the high degree of utilization of city parking (examinations) and the level of ecosystem services these parks provide.In cooperation with ECNU and the IÖR the work will continue on the analysis and evaluation of ecosystem services in Chinese cities.