Research
Focus Areas
Faculty 4 conducts research in contemporary topics as land and water resource management, biomass, climate change, origins of ecosystems and recultivation. These include niche fields of expertise to which BTU scientists make internationally recognised contributions, e.g. biomass as a raw material and renewable energy carriers, the German-Polish Environmental law (including sponsorship of a doctoral candidate colloquium), accuracy of regional weather forecasting against the backdrop of climate change and in terms of the origins of ecosystems, and long-term ecological monitoring of how ecosystems form.
The special research area/Transregio 38 "Structures and New Processes for Ecological System Development within Man-Made Collection Pools" is the focal point that acts to crystallise future research. The special research area/Transregio programme needs to be sustained, so that we can successfully meet the challenges of the second phase 2011 - 2015. It is especially important here to broaden the programme's base, as well as the number of Chairs providing expertise on the issue. It is necessary to determine the extent to which ongoing and future projects of the DFG and Federal Ministry of Education and Research will be available for us order to elaborate topics, that later cab be integrated into this focus area.
On the basis of the "Regional Transformation: Origins of Ecosystems, Landscape Development, Water Management" and "Sastainable Material and Energy Economics" research fields, the faculty is making significant contributions to the BTU's specialisation areas of environment and energy. Moreover, it is also contributing to the materials and building focus areas.
The contributions made to the specific focus areas are:
Energy
Particular emphasis is put on utilisation of biomass as a renewable energy carrier and fuel, the potential use of raw materials for energy production, emission reduction by way of exhaust gas cleaning and promoting new combustion methods, reducing energy consummation and increasing energy consciousness.
Environment
This broad focus area concentrates on cleaning up Chemical Engineering and Hazardous Wastes, biodiversity and nature conservation research, recultivation of previously mined areas, future land use ans soil management issues, effects of climate change on collection pools and ecosystems, eutrophication modelling and ground water/potable water resources.
Materials
Here we examine the use of biomass for the manufacture of materials, functional nano-particles and surface, and for repairing networks and recycling.
Building
This field examines re-use of concrete blocks used in building. Potential new areas here include bio-refining techniques, optimising processes and production facilities that save energy and resources, landscape conservation with mega-herbivores, environmental impact of new materials and products in terms of raw material consumption, examining complex, natural and anthropogenically caused problems in our region, state and globalised world, as well es research in complex, long-term ecological processes in interntional networks.