Professor Karim-Aly Kassam is not a tall man. But when he enters the stage – in this case the stage is the room between a blackboard and a table in a muggy lecture room in the GEO building at the University of Bayreuth – he has all the attention of his audience. In a very […]
In the last blog posts about palm oil, we gave you some insights about the huge impact of this material in our daily lives and told you about the problems. It is crucial to overthink our consumption and to try to use products with no palm oil – or plant-based oils in general, as the […]
It’s climate week on the Bayreuth University campus! There will be different activities all related to climate and environment in the next days. If you are interested in making a difference, how to contribute to a better world or just in the topic in general, you should better not miss this opportunity. For more information, […]
It is quite sunny on this day in the beginning of April. Severin Irl and Dagmar Hanz are sitting in their office at the department of Biogeography of the University of Bayreuth, good-humoured and well-tanned. No wonder – they just came back from their trip to the Canary Island La Palma, situated in the Atlantic […]
Countless rags are seaming the sides of the grey asphalt. Blue, white, transparent shimmery, paper rags, pieces of plastic bags, juice cartons and plastic straws. Kilometre after kilometre, it seems to be endless. The scene could be in a developing country where there is no such thing as a proper disposal of waste. But it […]
We live on the soil she gives us, We breath the air she provides, We eat the fruits from the fields and trees around us. And yet, we take her for granted. She satisfies our thirst for water, She eases us with a light rustling of green leaves when we are out of balance, […]
About three weeks ago, researchers and specialist from all over Europe came to Burg Rabenstein, a castle in the heart of Franconia. The reason for this encounter was Ecopotential, an EU-funded project that has the aim to monitor European ecosystem services through Earth observation, using satellite imagery and remote sensing. Ecopotential focusses on protected areas […]
It requires a little luck and steadiness to reach Benjamin Von Wong. And it also requires a lot of organizational talent regarding the time difference between Germany and the US west coast. But when we finally “meet” via Skype, the 31-year-old photographer is a very interesting and dedicated interview partner and not really what one […]
In my last article, I wrote about palm oil and the problems with this substance found almost everywhere. Instead of only writing about the problems I decided to take action and have a closer look at how palm oil is influencing my daily life. So, let’s begin with the facts. To find out when I […]
Smoke swells from the thick, green canopy of Indonesian rainforests. Orphaned orangutans cry for their mothers who were killed in the bush fires. Local inhabitants, children, women, men are inhaling the yellow swaths, only protected by dirty, once white masks; the air is filled with almost invisible particles of ashes coming from the burning forests. […]
