The Wadden Sea off the coast of the southern North Sea is the largest coherent area of tidal flats worldwide. As a highly productive ecosystem it is of global importance, e.g. as nursery for fish and as a feeding and resting area for 10 – 12 million migratory birds following the East Atlantic Flyway. The outstanding ecological significance of this region corresponds to a high level of protection by EU directives and national law and by inscription as UNESCO World Heritage Site, all of which requires regular monitoring and assessment. Apart from the ecological aspects, the Wadden Sea is also of great importance for coastal protection. To survey the extensive, often inaccessible tidal area, remote sensing is essential and while mainly airborne techniques have been carried out for decades, now high-resolution satellite-borne sensors open up new possibilities relevant for monitoring and long-term ecological research. Especially satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensors offer a high availability of acquisitions as they operate largely independently of daylight and weather. The aim of the studies presented here was to explore the use of data from the TerraSAR-X satellite to record geomorphological structures and habitats for Wadden Sea Monitoring. More than 100 TerraSAR-X acquisitions from 2009 to 2016 were analyzed to distinguish various and variable surface types continuously influenced by tidal dynamics in the main study area, the tidal flats near the island of Norderney. Visual image interpretation supported by extensive in-situ verification proved to be a suitable and unsophisticated approach which is unspecific enough to identify mussel beds, fields of shell-detritus, gully structures, mud fields, and intertidal bedforms in the upper flats of the East Frisian Islands. The method proved to be robust against changes in geometry of acquisition and environmental influences. Several time series of TerraSAR-X data enabled to follow inter-annual and seasonal dynamics as well as event effects (Adolph et al. 2018). The high-frequency TerraSAR-X data revealed novel evidence of an intertidal bedform shift in an easterly direction during the study period. To this aim, an unsupervised ISODATA classification of textural parameters was developed to vectorize and compare the bedforms positions in a GIS (Adolph et al. 2017a). The same intertidal bedform area was chosen as test-site for comparison of different remote sensing methods, namely airborne lidar, satellite-based radar (TerraSAR-X) and electro-optical sensors (RapidEye) (Adolph et al. 2017b). High-resolution SAR data offer a relevant component for Wadden Sea Monitoring and Research, as they provide reliable, regular data with a high repetition rate. In particular, habitats with noticeable surface roughness, specific structures and textures are well reflected. Geomorphic Structures and their dynamics can be observed indirectly via detection of residual water trapped within. A comprehensive concept for Wadden Sea Monitoring however, requires automatized classifications and an integrative, multi-sensor approach (SAR, LIDAR, multi-spectral data, drones) in which different and complementary information, coverage and resolutions (spatial and temporal) contribute to an overall picture. The studies were carried out as part of the joint research project “Scientific monitoring concepts for the German Bight” (WIMO), jointly funded by the Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Protection (NMU) and the Ministry of Science and Culture (NMWK) of the Federal State of Lower Saxony. The findings have been published in Geo-Marine Letters 37/2 (2017) and in Remote Sensing 10/7 (2018).

This cumulative dissertation presents an environmental economic geography approach to the study of waste and recycling. Thereby, it introduces the notion of ‘waste economies’, which describes the conjunction of the production of waste with the societal handling as well as the valorisation of waste. Two distinct regional case studies serve to illustrate different aspects of waste economies. The first case investigates the valorisation of surplus manure from intensive livestock farming through biogas production in a highly industrialized rural region in north-western Germany – the example of manure and digestate in the Oldenburger Münsterland. The second case focuses on the recovery and revalorisation of wasted materials in the labour-intensive urban informal economy of a metropolitan area in eastern India – the example of informal plastic recycling networks in Kolkata. On a theoretical level, the conceptualization of waste economies is located at the intersection of environmental economic geography and the interdisciplinary field of waste studies. It draws on the global production networks approach, social metabolism and Marxist political economy to analyse waste as a form of ‘hybrid’ socio-nature. Following a qualitative research methodology, the analysis of the two cases depicts the close entanglement of economic and environmental processes in the production, societal handling and economic valorisation of waste, and reveals how this intersection is conducive for capital accumulation. Three different economic processes and dynamics serve as central analytical dimensions to delineate the characteristics of waste economies with regard to the expanded reproduction of capital accumulation, that is, the continued growth of capitalist economies: processes of externalisation as well as dynamics of expansion and intensification. Through the combined up-scaled analysis of two empirical cases on a higher level of theoretical abstraction, this dissertation offers a better understanding of the economic function of waste in growth-oriented capitalist economies. In this way, it contributes to the global recycling network and global destruction network approaches within economic geography and relates them to scholarly concerns about global environmental change.

Die Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, welche Aspekte auf die Infrastrukturentwicklung im Abwasserbereich und insbesondere die Verbreitung alternativer Technologien auf Haushaltsebene Einfluss nehmen. Dabei werden technische, ökologische, ökonomische und soziale Wechselwirkungen zwischen der dezentralen und der zentralen Entsorgung berücksichtigt. Der Fokus liegt dabei auf dem ländlichen Raum der neuen Bundesländer. Es wird ein Simulationsmodell entwickelt, das das Verständnis über die Relevanz von Unsicherheiten in der Abwasserbeseitigung verbessern und eine Bewertung möglicher Maßnahmen hinsichtlich der Wirkung auf Gewässerschutz und Wirtschaftlichkeit erlauben soll. Zu diesem Zweck werden verschiedene Szenarien analysiert. Es zeigt sich zum einen, dass eine Verringerung der Ablauffrachten aus dezentralen Anlagen durch eine Reihe von Maßnahmen möglich ist, die in Abhängigkeit von den Rahmenbedingungen (Einsparpotenziale, Eigenkapitalausstattung, Umweltbewusstsein etc.) unterschiedlich wirken und daher auch situationsabhängig einzusetzen sind. Dazu gehören etwa die Entwicklung von Förderinstrumenten und Finanzierungsmodellen, ökologische Kampagnen, die Bekanntmachung von Investitionstätigkeiten, die frühzeitige Information über rechtliche Veränderungen und der gezielte Einsatz von Sanierungsanordnungen. Zum anderen können bei der zentralen Entsorgung gerade im ländlichen Raum Auslastungs- und Finanzierungsprobleme entstehen, die den weiteren Ausbau der zentralen Infrastruktur gefährden. Die Szenarien zeigen, dass daher bei der Infrastrukturplanung Unsicherheiten der Bevölkerungsentwicklung und insbesondere des spezifischen Abwasseranfalls berücksichtigt werden müssen. Eine zentrale Entsorgung ist im ländlichen Raum zu sozialverträglichen Gebühren nur unter erheblichem Fördermitteleinsatz möglich. Wichtigste Maßnahme zur Abschwächung der positiven Rückkopplung aus steigenden Gebühren und sinkendem Abwasseranfall ist die Erhebung von Grundgebühren.

No description available.