Faculty of Agricultural, Nutritional and Engineering Sciences

What has been known up until now as the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Bonn is being renamed the Faculty of Agricultural, Nutritional, and Engineering Sciences with immediate effect. The faculty is taking this step in order to better reflect the specialist fields that it covers by giving equal weight to the nutritional and engineering sciences alongside the agricultural sciences.

Jensen et al. (2024), including IGG scientists Helena Gerdener and Jürgen Kusche, evaluate trends in terrestrial water storage over 1950–2100 in CMIP6 climate models against the IGG GLWS2.0 global reanalysis from assimilating GRACE and GRACE-FO satellite observations into a hydrological model. The results were now published in the journal npj climate and atmopsheric sciences.

We eat too much meat in Germany and this not only has a negative impact on health but is also damaging for the environment and climate. Cafeteria owners are increasingly open to the idea of serving smaller portions of meat – especially for cost reasons. But how do you encourage their customers to choose smaller portions of meat? Researchers at the University of Bonn have been investigating this question at a cafeteria in a rehabilitation clinic. The desired effect was the biggest when the team at the cafeteria simply served smaller portions of meat and only topped them up when this was requested by customers. This approach was also largely accepted by patrons. The results have now been published in the journal “Environment and Behavior.”

There have never been so many ERC Starting Grants at once at the University of Bonn: no fewer than seven researchers have been successful with their applications in the highly competitive European Research Council (ERC) funding process. With their funding of some €1.5 million each, the researchers from the fields of ethics, mathematics, economics, soil science, computer science and astronomy will be able to realize their projects over the next five years.

How will crops grow in the future under the aggravated conditions of climate change? Future research projects at the University of Bonn will use the new climate chamber greenhouse, in which temperature, humidity and light can be regulated for experiments with the highest precision. This new 656 square-meter climate chamber-greenhouse complex, which was built at the Faculty of Agriculture, has now been inaugurated and will be used by researchers from several faculties.