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Tag: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

  • Sustainable land use: More food, more carbon storage

    Sustainable land use: More food, more carbon storage

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    Newswise — Researchers from KIT and HeiGIT Find That Land Use Change Can Increase Both Food Production and Carbon Storage CapacityResearchers from KIT and HeiGIT Find That Land Use Change Can Increase Both Food Production and Carbon Storage CapacityUse of the Earth’s surface by humans for the production of food, for instance, has changed considerably over the past centuries. Global population is increasing. More food is required and can be transported around the world within shortest periods of time. However, the historically developed food production systems do not reflect the biophysical potential of our ecosystems. The study shows that food is not produced at places where that would be most efficient in terms of area use, water consumption, and CO2 emissions. Instead, deforestation is being continued to obtain cropland and pastures and arid fields are being irrigated. These activities have a massive negative impact on water availability and carbon storage.

    But what if fields, pastures, and natural vegetation were moved to where it would be most efficient? What if croplands were restricted to areas that do not require extensive irrigation? To answer these questions, the researchers from KIT and HeiGIT combined a dynamic vegetation model with an optimization algorithm to study alternative global land use scenarios and their impacts.

    Optimized Land Use Would Increase Food Production by More than 80 Percent and CO2 Storage Capacity by Three Percent on the Average

    The researchers modeled optimized land use for climate conditions of an optimistic scenario and a presently more realistic climate change scenario for the near and far future (2033 to 2042 and 2090 to 2099). The result: Spatial reorganization alone would increase food production by an average of 83 percent, water availability by eight percent, and CO2 storage capacity by three percent. These increases would be even higher, if one of the three parameters would be given priority over the remaining two.

    “Our study exclusively covered the biophysical potential as the basis for land use that would consider the target conflicts much better,” says first author Dr. Anita Bayer from KIT’s Campus Alpine in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. “We found that there are indeed regions in which certain land uses would be advantageous or optimal.” According to the study, tropical and boreal forests would have to be preserved or reforested due to their excellent CO2 storage capacities rather than being used as croplands or pastures. Temperate latitudes would have to serve as cropland rather than pastures. This would compensate area loss due to the reforestation of tropical and boreal forests. The wide and open tropical and subtropical savannas and grasslands would have to be used as pastures and for food production. “This optimal land use scheme turned out to be very stable in our study,” Bayer says.

    Deliberate Change of Land Use

    The study shows that regional practice strongly differs from the theoretically achievable optimum. Massive landuse changes would be required to make better use of the biophysical potential, while increasingincrease food production, water availability, and carbon storage capacity at the same time. “Although such major land use changes appear to be unrealistic, we should be aware of the fact that climate change will be associated with big changes of cultivation areas anyway,” says Professor Sven Lautenbach, researcher of HeiGIT and the Geographical Institute of Heidelberg University. “We should not let these changes happen, but try to manage them taking into account the biophysical potential.”

    “Securing global food supply is one of the major challenges of our time and climate change will aggravate this problem in many regions,” says Professor Almut Arneth from the Atmospheric Environmental Research Division of KIT’s Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research, KIT’S Campus Alpine in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. “Our study clearly shows that in spite of unfavorable climatic changes, optimized land use could significantly increase agricultural yields and limit area consumption at the same time. It is now important to find ways to implement land use changes that take into account both biophysical conditions and social aspects.”

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    Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

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  • Lithium Sustainability for Decades

    Lithium Sustainability for Decades

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    Newswise — On the way towards climate neutrality, Europe will need large amounts of lithium for battery storage systems. So far, however, its share in the worldwide lithium extraction volume has been one percent only. For this reason, researchers of KIT study ways to extract lithium from geothermal sources. “In theory, geothermal power plants in the Upper Rhine Valley and Northern German Basin might cover between 2 and 12 percent of Germany’s annual lithium demand,” says Valentin Goldberg from KIT’s Institute of Applied Geosciences (AGW). With his team, he calculated this potential based on an extensive data analysis. However, it has not been clear for how long extraction will be possible. Another study of the researchers now offers an optimistic perspective. “According to our findings, lithium extraction will be possible for many years at low environmental cost,” Goldberg says. “The model developed for our study describes lithium extraction in the Upper Rhine Valley. But parameters are chosen such that they can also be transferred to other joint systems.“

    Modeling of Geothermal Lithium Production

    Extraction of lithium from thermal waters is no conventional type of mining. That is why no conventional methods could be applied for analysis. “The lithium dissolved in water exists in a widely branched network of joints and cavities in the rock. However, it can only be accessed at certain points via individual wells,” says Dr. Fabian Nitschke, AGW, who was also involved in this study. “The reservoir dimension, hence, depends on the amount of water that can be accessed hydraulically via wells.” To calculate the lithium production potential, researchers had to consider the potential water extraction volume, its lithium concentration, and lithium extraction per unit time. “We use a dynamic transport model adapted to underground conditions in the Upper Rhine Valley. It couples thermal, hydraulic, and chemical processes. Similar models are known from petroleum and gas industry, but have not yet been applied to lithium,” Nitschke points out.

    When using geothermal energy, the extracted water is pumped back into the ground via a second borehole. Researchers wanted to find out whether lithium concentration of the deep water decreases with time. The results show that lithium concentration in the extraction borehole decreases by 30 to 50 percent in the first third of the investigation period of 30 years, as the deep water is diluted by the returned water. Then, lithium concentration remains constant. “This can be attributed to the open joint system that continuously supplies fresh deep water from other directions,” Nitschke says. Modeling suggests that continuous lithium extraction will be possible for decades: “Actually, extraction of this unconventional resource shows the classical cyclic behavior. Yields of hydrocarbon extraction or ore mining are also highest in the beginning and then start to decrease gradually.”

    Sensible Investment in a Sustainable Future

    Thomas Kohl from AGW, who directs the corresponding research activities as Professor for Geothermal Energy and Reservoir Technology, considers the research results another argument in favor of a wide use of geothermal energy. “We already knew that geothermal sources can supply baseload-capable, renewable energy for decades. Our study now reveals that a single power plant in the Upper Rhine Valley could additionally cover up to 3 percent of the annual German lithium consumption.” Kohl’s group is now working on solutions for practical implementation.. Recently, it published a study in Desalination on the preliminary treatment of thermal water for resource extraction. “The next step now is to transfer this technology to the industrial scale,” Kohl says.

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    Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

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  • Leadership Online: Charisma Matters Most in Video Communication

    Leadership Online: Charisma Matters Most in Video Communication

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    Newswise — Managers need to make a consistent impression in order to motivate and inspire people, and that applies even more to video communication than to other digital channels. That is the result of a study by researchers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). They investigated the influence that charismatic leadership tactics used in text, audio and video communication channels have on employee performance. They focused on mobile work and the gig economy, in which jobs are flexibly assigned to freelancers via online platforms. The results of the study have been published in The Leadership Quarterly. (DOI: 10.1016/j.leaqua.2022.101631)

     Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, more and more people are working partly or entirely from home or in mobile work arrangements. At the same time, the so-called gig economy is growing. It involves the flexible assignment of short-term work to freelancers or part-time, low-wage staff via online platforms. Both trends are accelerating the digitalization of work. However, compared to face-to-face conversation between people in the same place, communication through digital channels offers fewer opportunities to motivate people and show charisma. This presents new challenges for managers. The impact of charismatic leadership tactics (CLTs) and the choice of communications channel (text, audio or video) on staff performance is the subject of a study by Petra Nieken, professor of human resource management at the Institute of Management at KIT. The study has been published in the journal The Leadership Quarterly.

    Charismatic Leadership Tactics Can Be Learned and Objectively Observed

    A charismatic leadership style can be learned; researchers speak of charismatic leadership tactics, which include verbal, paraverbal and non-verbal means such as metaphors, anecdotes, contrasts, rhetorical questions, pitch and tone of voice, and gestures. CLTs can be objectively observed and measured. They can be selectively changed in randomized controlled trials. “Managers can use the entire range of CLTs in face-to-face meetings. Digital communication reduces the opportunities to signal charisma,” says Nieken. “Depending on the communication channel, visual and/or acoustic cues can be missing. The question is whether people’s performance suffers as a result or if they adjust their expectations to the selected channel.”

    In the first part of her study, Nieken conducted a field test with text, audio and video communication channels in which a task description was presented neutrally in one case and with the use of as many CLTs as possible in the other. In the neutral case, video messages led to lower performance than did audio and text messages. In contrast, there were no significant differences in performance in the CLT case. “The results show a positive correlation between video communication and charismatic communication; the charismatic video led to better performance than the neutral video,” explains Nieken. “So we can conclude that it’s most important for managers to convey a consistent impression when they use the video channel.”

    Traditional Charisma Questionnaires Do Not Predict Staff Performance

    In the second part of her study, Nieken had the different cases assessed with traditional questionnaires like the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) and compared the results with those from the first part. Charisma noted in the questionnaires correlated with the use of CLTs but not with staff performance. “Traditional questionnaires like the MLQ are not suitable for predicting how people will perform in mobile work situations, working from home or in the gig economy,” concludes Nieken. 

    Original publication

    Petra Nieken: Charisma in the gig economy: The impact of digital leadership and communication channels on performance. The Leadership Quarterly, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.leaqua.2022.101631

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984322000340

    Being “The Research University in the Helmholtz Association”, KIT creates and imparts knowledge for the society and the environment. It is the objective to make significant contributions to the global challenges in the fields of energy, mobility, and information. For this, about 9,800 employees cooperate in a broad range of disciplines in natural sciences, engineering sciences, economics, and the humanities and social sciences. KIT prepares its 22,300 students for responsible tasks in society, industry, and science by offering research-based study programs. Innovation efforts at KIT build a bridge between important scientific findings and their application for the benefit of society, economic prosperity, and the preservation of our natural basis of life. KIT is one of the German universities of excellence.

     

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    Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

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