ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

Pollinator declines in response to land-use intensification have raised concern about the persistence of plant species dependent on insect pollination, in particular by bees, for their reproduction. Recent empirical studies show that reduced pollinator abundance decreases densities of seedlings of insect-pollinated plants and thereby changes the composition of grassland plant communities. Cascading effects on ecosystem functioning and associated organisms are expected, but to which extent and under which conditions this is the case is yet unexplored. Here, I propose a bold, multi-year, landscape-scale experimental assessment of the extent of pollinator-driven plant community changes, their consequences for associated organisms and important ecosystem functions, and their likely contingency on other factors (soil fertility, herbivory). Specifically I will: (1) Set up a network of long-term research plots in landscapes differing in pollinator abundance to measure the changes in plant reproduction over successive years, and assessing experimentally how herbivory and soil fertility mediate these effects. (2) Explore the individual processes linking pollinators, plant communities and ecosystem functioning using long-term experiments controlling pollinator, herbivore and nutrient availability, focusing on a sample of plant species covering both the dominant species and a diversity of functional traits. (3) Assess the context-dependence of pollinator-mediated plant community determination by building and applying process-based models based on observational and experimental data, and combine with existing spatially-explicit pollinator models to demonstrate the applicability to assess agri-environmental measures. This powerful blend of complementary approaches will for the first time shed light on the cornerstone role of this major mutualism in maintaining diverse communities and the functions they support, and pinpoint the risks threatening them and the need for mitigation.

1 998 842 €

Start date: 2019-09-01, End date: 2024-08-31

Besides the need for large-scale implementation of renewable energy sources, there is an equivalent need for new energy storage solutions. This is not least true for the transport sector, where electric vehicles are expanding rapidly. The rich flora of battery chemistries – today crowned by the Li-ion battery – is likewise expected to expand in upcoming years. Novel types of batteries, “post-lithium ion”, will challenge the Li-ion chemistries by advantages in cost, sustainability, elemental abundance or energy density. This requires significant improvements of the materials, not least regarding the electrolyte. The conventional liquid battery electrolytes pose a problem already for the mature Li-ion chemistries due to safety and cost, but are particularly destructive for future battery types such as Li-metal, organic electrodes, Li-S, Li-O2, Na- or Mg-batteries, where rapid degradation and loss of material are associated with incompatibilities with the electrolytes. In this context, solid state polymer electrolytes (SPEs) could provide a considerable improvement. The field of solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) is dominated by polyethers, particularly poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO). This application regards moving out of the established PEO-paradigm and exploring alternative polymer hosts for SPEs, primarily polycarbonates and polyesters. These ‘alternative’ polymers are comparatively easy to work with synthetically, and their possible functionalization is straightforward. The work aims at exploring functionalized alternative polymer host for mechanically robust block-copolymer systems, for alternative cation chemistries (Na, Mg, etc.), for extremely high and low electrochemical potentials, and for unstable and easily dissolved electrode materials (sulfur, organic). Moreover, since the ion transport processes in the host materials are fundamentally different from polyethers, there is a need for investigating the conduction mechanisms using simulations.

1 950 732 €

Start date: 2018-09-01, End date: 2023-08-31

One of the greatest recent advances in climate science is that it is now beyond reasonable doubt that human activity is warming the Earth. The next natural question is by how much the Earth will warm for a given emission – a quantity that will be essential to regulating global warming. Yet, the likely range of 1.5-4.5 K for equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) for a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration has not been reduced for decades. In particular the risk of ECS being high is concerning, but also represents a scientifically intriguing challenge. In this project I will conduct unconventional and innovative research designed to limit the upper bound of ECS: I will confront leading hypotheses of extreme cloud feedbacks – the primary potential source of a high ECS – with observations from the full instrumental- and satellite records, and proxies from warm- and cold past climates. I will investigate how ocean- and atmospheric circulations impact cloud feedbacks, and seek the limits for how much past greenhouse warming could have been masked by aerosol cooling. The highECS project builds on my developments of climate modeling, diagnostics and statistical methods, the strengths of the host institution and developments in national and international projects. The effort is timely in that the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) has identified uncertainty in ECS as one of the grand challenges of climate science, while the capacity to observe ongoing climate change, key cloud processes, extracting new proxy evidence of past change and computing power is greater than ever before. If successful in my objective of reining in the upper bound on climate sensitivity this will be a major breakthrough upon a nearly 40-year scientific deadlock and reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change – if not, it will indicate that extreme policy measures may be needed to curb future global warming. Either way, the economic value of knowing is tremendous.

1 998 654 €

Start date: 2018-09-01, End date: 2023-08-31

NUCLEARWATERS develops a groundbreaking new approach to studying the history of nuclear energy. Rather than interpreting nuclear energy history as a history of nuclear physics and radiochemistry, it analyses it as a history of water. The project develops the argument that nuclear energy is in essence a hydraulic form of technology, and that it as such builds on centuries and even millennia of earlier hydraulic engineering efforts worldwide – and, culturally speaking, on earlier “hydraulic civilizations”, from ancient Egypt to the modern Netherlands. I investigate how historical water-manipulating technologies and wet and dry risk conceptions from a deeper past were carried on into the nuclear age. These risk conceptions brought with them a complex set of social and professional practices that displayed considerable inertia and were difficult to change – sometimes paving the way for disaster. Against this background I hypothesize that a water-centred nuclear energy history enables us to resolve a number of the key riddles in nuclear energy history and to grasp the deeper historical logic behind various nuclear disasters and accidents worldwide. The project is structured along six work packages that problematize the centrality – and dilemma – of water in nuclear energy history from different thematic and geographical angles. These include in-depth studies of the transnational nuclear-hydraulic engineering community, of the Soviet Union’s nuclear waters, of the Rhine Valley as a transnational and heavily nuclearized river basin, of Japan’s atomic coastscapes and of the ecologically and politically fragile Baltic Sea region. The ultimate ambition is to significantly revise nuclear energy history as we know it – with implications not only for the history of technology as an academic field (and its relationship with environmental history), but also for the public debate about nuclear energy’s future in Europe and beyond.

1 991 008 €

Start date: 2018-05-01, End date: 2023-04-30