Publications
NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.
2025
Authors
Michel VerheulAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Getachew Birhanu Abera Aryan Bhusal Thea Os Andersen Shuai Wang Nabin Aryal Svein Jarle Horn Lu FengAbstract
In-situ biomethanation is an efficient process for converting carbon dioxide (CO2) to methane (CH4) using hydrogen (H2) alongside anaerobic digestion (AD) process. However, AD of protein rich substrate often leads to the accumulation of ammonia nitrogen at high concentration. As a major inhibitor, this accumulation affects not only the AD process but also in-situ biomethanation. This study investigated the impact of ammonia nitrogen (0.5–5 g/L) on biomethanation performance using anaerobic moving-bed biofilm reactors (AnMBBRs). Without biofilm/biocarrier support, methane production was significantly inhibited above 3 g/L of ammonia nitrogen. In contrast, AnMBBR maintained high methane yields of 156.5 NmL/Lreactor at 2.5 g/L and 151.3 NmL/Lreactor at 5 g/L ammonia nitrogen, representing increases of 49 % and 76 %, respectively, compared to reactors without biofilm. Microbial analysis via 16S rRNA sequencing showed that Methanothermobacter, a thermophilic hydrogenotrophic methanogen, increased in relative abundance under ammonia nitrogen stress, which was further supported by carbon isotope analysis. Overall, these results highlighted the potential of AnMBBR to overcome ammonia nitrogen stress in in-situ biomethanation.
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Stephan Arnold Geoffrey Smith Geir-Harald Strand Gerard Hazeu Michael Bock Barbara Kosztra Christoph Perger Gebhard Banko Tomas Soukup Nuria Valcarcel Sanz Stefan Kleeschulte Julian Delgado Hernandez Emanuele MancosuAbstract
The demand for land monitoring information continues to increase, but the range and diversity of the available products to date have made their integrated use challenging and, at times, counterproductive. There has therefore been a growing need to enhance and harmonise the practice of land monitoring on a pan-European level with the formulation of a more consistent and standardised set of modelling criteria. The outcome has been a paradigm shift away from a “paper map”-based world where features are given a single, fixed label to one where features have a rich characterisation which is more informative, flexible and powerful. The approach allows the characteristics to be dynamic so that, over time, a feature may only change part of its description (i.e., a forest can be felled, but it may remain as forestry if replanted) or it can have multiple descriptors (i.e., a forest may be used for both timber production and recreation). The concept proposed by the authors has evolved since 2008 from first drafts to a comprehensive and powerful tool adopted by the European Union’s Copernicus programme. It provides for the semantic decomposition of existing nomenclatures, as well as supports a descriptive approach to the mapping of all landscape features in a flexible and object-oriented manner. In this way, the key move away from classification towards the characterisation of the Earth’s surface represents a novel and innovate approach to handling complex land surface information more suited to the age of distributed databases, cloud computing and object-oriented data modelling. In this paper, the motivation for and technical approach of the EAGLE concept with its matrix and UML model implementation are explained. This is followed by an update of the latest developments and the presentation of a number of experimental and operational use cases at national and European levels, and it then concludes with thoughts on the future outlook.
Authors
Alexander Jueterbock Clément Gauci Anne Margrete Leiros Nilsen Niko Steiner Ananya Khatei Griffin Goldstein Hill Leo Minini Christian Guido Bruckner Nikolai Buer Ralf Rautenberger Mark J. Cock Inka BartschAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Ya-Lan Hong Wei-Ming Xi Ya-Ting Wang Yi Yuan Zong-Zhuan Shen Ming Tian Jihong Liu Clarke Wang-Ying Xie Fang-jie ZhaoAbstract
Environmental transmission of antibiotic resistance poses a significant threat to human health by undermining the efficacy of therapeutic interventions against bacterial infections. Agricultural practices, particularly the application of organic fertilizers derived from animal manure, are major contributors to the spread of antibiotic resistance determinants (ARDs) in soil ecosystems. However, the fates of ARDs and their bacterial hosts in soil following organic fertilization as well as the impact of water management regimes remain poorly understood. We investigated the attenuation and persistence of ARDs in soil following organic fertilization under water management practices of upland, continuous flooding, and intermittent flooding. Most ARDs introduced via the organic fertilizer exhibited significant attenuation, with half-lives ranging from 19 to 50 days, primarily due to the decline of fertilizer-derived bacterial hosts. Specific ARDs, such as aph(3’)-IIIa and tetO, persisted across all treatments. Upland conditions accelerated the attenuation of ARDs and their pathogenic hosts compared to f looding conditions, which prolonged their survival and promoted horizontal gene transfer. The divergent responses of ARD composition and soil bacterial communities to the environmental variables revealed a unique dissemination pattern, wherein the soil co-occurring bacterial communities served as critical hubs for the dissemination of ARDs and their bacterial hosts from organic fertilizers. The soil co-occurring bacterial communities exhibited strong interspecies interactions and high sensitivity to environmental changes. Targeted strategies to disrupt these assembly hubs may provide an effective way to mitigate the spread of antibiotic resistance from organic fertilizers to soil ecosystems.
Abstract
Wood modification by impregnation with phenol-formaldehyde (PF) resins is a promising method to improve the woods’ fungal decay resistance, weathering resistance, and dimensional stability. Recent research indicates that 30% of the non-renewable phenol may be substituted by renewable softwood kraft lignin cleavage products obtained through microwave-assisted pyrolysis. Pinus sylvestris sapwood modified with this resin has good fungal decay resistance but slightly enhanced formaldehyde emission. While these results on solid wood indicate a high potential of the method, the properties of modified plywood may differ, and the weathering resistance has not been studied. In this study, formaldehyde emission, weathering resistance and fungal decay resistance against three basidiomycetes (Trametes versicolor, Rhodonia placenta, and Gloeophyllum trabeum) of plywood modified with pure PF resin and PF resin with 30% substitution of the phenol by lignin cleavage products were analysed. The 30% lignin cleavage product substitution didn’t affect the plywood’s fungal decay resistance, with less than 1% initial mass loss in all modified specimens. While the decay resistance improved significantly for all modified samples compared to reference samples, weathering resistance slightly declined with phenol substitution compared to pure PF resin modification. The formaldehyde emissions of the plywood modified with both resins were in similar ranges to that of unmodified reference plywood. Overall, plywood with good properties for exterior applications may be produced even with the substitution of 30% of the phenol by lignin cleavage products, allowing for increased use of renewable resources.