LILa construction April- June 2025

Everything is coming together, and the lab is set to open officially in October under the new name of UT Field Lab. We are also working with the Climate Center to expand long term research goals outside and inside of the former BMC building, going beyond testing the performance of green infrastructure and actively involving stakeholders on the larger societal impacts of climate change. This site can lead to more chances for interactive design of solutions for climate change adaptation. But for now, the planned research is being finished, and plant life is growing abundantly.

Initially in April there is not a lot of visual change from March.

 

 

 In May we can see plant growth as well as the foundations of the green house being laid. 

 

 

 

This continues to progess smoothly towards the end of May.

 

 

 

In June we see the construction of multiple research projects heading into the sky, including finally the tallest research tower that will have a weather station. 

 

 

 

 

Student research results - thermal walks Hengelo

Last May two thermal walks were conducted with participants in Hengelo to test five different locations where the municipality has implemented blue/green infrastructure. While some findings were in line with expectations, large trees with more shadow providing a more comfortable environment than small trees, the results on water fountains were more difficult to interpret. 

The summarized results: "dense-canopy trees were the most effective intervention, lowering Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) by up to 5.3 °C and having the highest comfort ratings. Sparse-canopy trees also provided substantial cooling (up to 4.1 °C decrease in WBGT) and are more feasible to plant with their lower spatial requirements and easier to implement in narrower streets of Hengelo’s city centre. The green square presented moderate cooling and mostly positive thermal comfort ratings, although, its use is spatially and financially constrained. Water features were less effective, since the sensors at the water pond recorded consistent warming effects despite positive feedback from the participants, while the water fountain recorded measurable cooling, but had low perceived comfort, as it lacked shade and surrounding vegetation."  

You can read more details in the thesis by Katarzyna MartaOłdak, titled 'Evaluation of the Local Cooling Effect of Existing Green-Blue Infrastructure in Hengelo Through Thermal Walks', at the UTwente repository. 

World day to combat desertification

It is world day to combat desertification. There are many reasons why the UN has chosen this particular problem to focus on:

"Desertification, land degradation, and drought are among the most pressing environmental challenges of our time, with up to 40% of all land area worldwide already considered degraded.

Healthy land not only provides us with almost 95% of our food but so much more: it clothes and shelters us, provides jobs and livelihoods, and protects us from the worsening droughts, floods and wildfires.

Every second, an equivalent of four football fields of healthy land becomes degraded, adding up to a total of 100 million hectares each year."

There are also several reasons why this is important even in the Netherlands. As we are facing a climate that will both be wetter and drier, in shorter intensities, we need to know what species can best survive the drier summers with little maintenance.

We heavily rely on agriculture, with our current water consumption already leading to the question of what to replace flower bulbs with in 20 to 40 years as there is not enough fresh water to sustainably farm these.

We would like green infrastructure to help reduce the urban heat island effect, but we know 40% of our current species already cannot survive the predicted new hotter and drier climate extremes. Other species dependent on vegetation are also negatively impacted by these changes. 

While this is not yet desertification, it is clear that our own country is heavily dependent on how we manage our vegetation. We are also impacted by the amount of global desertification, both directly and indirectly.

Visit from Korean delegation

Today we were very honored to have a visit from members of the Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements  and the National Disaster Management Research Institute. In the morning we had time for a research exchange between our members on the topic of water and drought management.

 

 UT's Climate Center was kind enough to help organize a space for this mini symposium. As both ITC and ET faculties have research on these topics, I had invited from the ITC faculty Prof. Victor Jetten to talk about flooding in Limburg and nature based solutions, and Dr. Bastian van de Bout to talk about flood hazard software. From the ET faculty we had our most recent PhD students Maren Jabs and Christoph Euringer show their projects on water allocation and drought resilience in Twente. You can find more information on research we do at UT on these topics here and here. 

 

From the Korean side, my former colleague from ICHARM in Japan, Sangeun Lee, who is now managing director at KRIHS, and Hyeon Cheol Yoon from the NDMI, showed how drought is now increasing in Korea, even leading to dam depletion, agriculture losses, and high increase in food prices. Current policy measures have to change to resolve these issues.

 

 

 

In the afternoon we had Henk Lansink, a member of waterboard Vechtstromen present about the retention basin between Hengelo and Enschede, called Kristalbad, and after we had an excursion there while it was 30 degrees. We learned how this retention basin helps purify the water coming out of the sewage treatment plant in a natural way, and how the different areas are filled and then drained to the next level to increase oxidation. There were many baby birds nestling in the area, and a few other visitors. Though one day was much to short to learn all we wanted to from each other, I look forward to our future collaborations.