TY - JOUR A1 - Zielhofer, Christoph A1 - Schmidt, Johannes A1 - Reiche, Niklas A1 - Tautenhahn, Marie A1 - Ballasus, Helen A1 - Burkart, Michael A1 - Linstädter, Anja A1 - Dietze, Elisabeth A1 - Kaiser, Knut A1 - Mehler, Natascha T1 - The lower Havel River Region (Brandenburg, Germany) BT - a 230-Year-Long historical map record indicates a decrease in surface water areas and groundwater levels JF - Water N2 - Instrumental data show that the groundwater and lake levels in Northeast Germany have decreased over the past decades, and this process has accelerated over the past few years. In addition to global warming, the direct influence of humans on the local water balance is suspected to be the cause. Since the instrumental data usually go back only a few decades, little is known about the multidecadal to centennial-scale trend, which also takes long-term climate variation and the long-term influence by humans on the water balance into account. This study aims to quantitatively reconstruct the surface water areas in the Lower Havel Inner Delta and of adjacent Lake Gulpe in Brandenburg. The analysis includes the calculation of surface water areas from historical and modern maps from 1797 to 2020. The major finding is that surface water areas have decreased by approximately 30% since the pre-industrial period, with the decline being continuous. Our data show that the comprehensive measures in Lower Havel hydro-engineering correspond with groundwater lowering that started before recent global warming. Further, large-scale melioration measures with increasing water demands in the upstream wetlands beginning from the 1960s to the 1980s may have amplified the decline in downstream surface water areas. KW - long-term hydrological changes KW - historical maps KW - review of written KW - sources KW - preindustrial to industrial period KW - hydro-engineering history; KW - effects of global warming KW - drying trend KW - wetlands KW - drainage works to KW - create cropland KW - Lower Havel River Region KW - Brandenburg KW - Germany Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/w14030480 SN - 2073-4441 VL - 14 IS - 3 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wutzler, Bianca A1 - Hudson, Paul A1 - Thieken, Annegret T1 - Adaptation strategies of flood-damaged businesses in Germany JF - Frontiers in water N2 - Flood risk management in Germany follows an integrative approach in which both private households and businesses can make an important contribution to reducing flood damage by implementing property-level adaptation measures. While the flood adaptation behavior of private households has already been widely researched, comparatively less attention has been paid to the adaptation strategies of businesses. However, their ability to cope with flood risk plays an important role in the social and economic development of a flood-prone region. Therefore, using quantitative survey data, this study aims to identify different strategies and adaptation drivers of 557 businesses damaged by a riverine flood in 2013 and 104 businesses damaged by pluvial or flash floods between 2014 and 2017. Our results indicate that a low perceived self-efficacy may be an important factor that can reduce the motivation of businesses to adapt to flood risk. Furthermore, property-owners tended to act more proactively than tenants. In addition, high experience with previous flood events and low perceived response costs could strengthen proactive adaptation behavior. These findings should be considered in business-tailored risk communication. KW - risk management KW - climate change adaptation KW - floods KW - disaster risk KW - reduction KW - Germany KW - precaution KW - emergency management Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/frwa.2022.932061 SN - 2624-9375 VL - 4 PB - Frontiers Media CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wutzler, Bianca A1 - Hudson, Paul A1 - Thieken, Annegret T1 - Adaptation strategies of flood-damaged businesses in Germany JF - Frontiers in Water N2 - Flood risk management in Germany follows an integrative approach in which both private households and businesses can make an important contribution to reducing flood damage by implementing property-level adaptation measures. While the flood adaptation behavior of private households has already been widely researched, comparatively less attention has been paid to the adaptation strategies of businesses. However, their ability to cope with flood risk plays an important role in the social and economic development of a flood-prone region. Therefore, using quantitative survey data, this study aims to identify different strategies and adaptation drivers of 557 businesses damaged by a riverine flood in 2013 and 104 businesses damaged by pluvial or flash floods between 2014 and 2017. Our results indicate that a low perceived self-efficacy may be an important factor that can reduce the motivation of businesses to adapt to flood risk. Furthermore, property-owners tended to act more proactively than tenants. In addition, high experience with previous flood events and low perceived response costs could strengthen proactive adaptation behavior. These findings should be considered in business-tailored risk communication. KW - risk management KW - climate change adaptation KW - floods KW - disaster risk reduction KW - Germany KW - precaution KW - emergency management Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/frwa.2022.932061 SN - 2624-9375 PB - Frontiers Media SA CY - Lausanne, Schweiz ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wende, Wolfgang A1 - Wojtkiewicz, Wera A1 - Marschall, Ilke A1 - Heiland, Stefan A1 - Lipp, Torsten A1 - Reinke, Markus A1 - Schaal, Peter A1 - Schmidt, Catrin T1 - Putting the plan into practice implementation of proposals for measures of local landscape plans JF - Landscape research N2 - The knowledge of the effectiveness of local landscape planning in Germany is in the main limited to particular cases and derives mostly from qualitative single case studies. This applies especially to the implementation of measures defined by landscape plans. To fill that gap, the paper focuses on the implementation of those measures. Furthermore, it discusses the factors and framework conditions which are crucial for this implementation. The potential factors and conditions of influence were derived from theory and compiled in 20 investigation hypotheses. In order to gain information on the execution of the measures, 28 randomly selected plans were first analysed, then interviews were carried out with administration representatives. It can be stated that landscape planning has positively influenced the development of nature and landscape in the investigated municipalities. A considerable number of measures had been implemented, although landscape planning as a supply-side instrument proposes generally a very large number of measures. Factors with a positive effect on the implementation of landscape planning measures are pointed out. KW - Landscape planning KW - nature conservation KW - effectiveness KW - quantitative research KW - Germany KW - municipality Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/01426397.2011.592575 SN - 0142-6397 VL - 37 IS - 4 SP - 483 EP - 500 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Webber, Heidi A1 - Lischeid, Gunnar A1 - Sommer, Michael A1 - Finger, Robert A1 - Nendel, Claas A1 - Gaiser, Thomas A1 - Ewert, Frank T1 - No perfect storm for crop yield failure in Germany JF - Environmental research letters N2 - Large-scale crop yield failures are increasingly associated with food price spikes and food insecurity and are a large source of income risk for farmers. While the evidence linking extreme weather to yield failures is clear, consensus on the broader set of weather drivers and conditions responsible for recent yield failures is lacking. We investigate this for the case of four major crops in Germany over the past 20 years using a combination of machine learning and process-based modelling. Our results confirm that years associated with widespread yield failures across crops were generally associated with severe drought, such as in 2018 and to a lesser extent 2003. However, for years with more localized yield failures and large differences in spatial patterns of yield failures between crops, no single driver or combination of drivers was identified. Relatively large residuals of unexplained variation likely indicate the importance of non-weather related factors, such as management (pest, weed and nutrient management and possible interactions with weather) explaining yield failures. Models to inform adaptation planning at farm, market or policy levels are here suggested to require consideration of cumulative resource capture and use, as well as effects of extreme events, the latter largely missing in process-based models. However, increasingly novel combinations of weather events under climate change may limit the extent to which data driven methods can replace process-based models in risk assessments. KW - crop yield failure KW - extreme events KW - support vector machine KW - process-based crop model KW - Germany Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aba2a4 SN - 1748-9326 VL - 15 IS - 10 PB - IOP Publ. Ltd. CY - Bristol ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Vogel, Kristin A1 - Weise, Laura A1 - Schröter, Kai A1 - Thieken, Annegret T1 - Identifying Driving Factors in Flood-Damaging Processes Using Graphical Models JF - Water resources research N2 - Flood damage estimation is a core task in flood risk assessments and requires reliable flood loss models. Identifying the driving factors of flood loss at residential buildings and gaining insight into their relations is important to improve our understanding of flood damage processes. For that purpose, we learn probabilistic graphical models, which capture and illustrate (in-)dependencies between the considered variables. The models are learned based on postevent surveys with flood-affected residents after six flood events, which occurred in Germany between 2002 and 2013. Besides the sustained building damage, the survey data contain information about flooding parameters, early warning and emergency measures, property-level mitigation measures and preparedness, socioeconomic characteristics of the household, and building characteristics. The analysis considers the entire data set with a total of 4,468 cases as well as subsets of the data set partitioned into single flood events and flood types: river floods, levee breaches, surface water flooding, and groundwater floods, to reveal differences in the damaging processes. The learned networks suggest that the flood loss ratio of residential buildings is directly influenced by hydrological and hydraulic aspects as well as by building characteristics and property-level mitigation measures. The study demonstrates also that for different flood events and process types the building damage is influenced by varying factors. This suggests that flood damage models need to be capable of reproducing these differences for spatial and temporal model transfers. KW - flood loss KW - Bayesian Network KW - Markov Blanket KW - vulnerability KW - Germany Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1029/2018WR022858 SN - 0043-1397 SN - 1944-7973 VL - 54 IS - 11 SP - 8864 EP - 8889 PB - American Geophysical Union CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Tjaden, Jasper A1 - Heidland, Tobias T1 - Did Merkel’s 2015 decision attract more migration to Germany? JF - European journal of political research N2 - In 2015, German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to allow over a million asylum seekers to cross the border into Germany. One key concern was that her decision would signal an open-door policy to aspiring migrants worldwide – thus further increasing migration to Germany and making the country permanently more attractive to irregular and humanitarian migrants. This ‘pull-effect’ hypothesis has been a mainstay of policy discussions ever since. With the continued global rise in forced displacement, not appearing welcoming to migrants has become a guiding principle for the asylum policy of many large receiving countries. In this article, we exploit the unique case study that Merkel's 2015 decision provides for answering the fundamental question of whether welcoming migration policies have sustained effects on migration towards destination countries. We analyze an extensive range of data on migration inflows, migration aspirations and online search interest between 2000 and 2020. The results reject the ‘pull effect’ hypothesis while reaffirming states’ capacity to adapt to changing contexts and regulate migration. KW - migration KW - policy KW - refugee KW - pull effect KW - Germany Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12669 SN - 0304-4130 SN - 1475-6765 SP - 1 EP - 17 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Thomeczek, Jan Philipp T1 - Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW): left-wing authoritarian—and populist? BT - an empirical analysis JF - Politische Vierteljahresschrift N2 - Germany’s relatively stable party system faces a new left-authoritarian challenger: Sahra Wagenknecht’s Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) party. First polls indicate that for the BSW, election results above 10% are within reach. While Wagenknecht’s positions in economic and cultural terms have already been discussed, this article elaborates on another highly relevant feature of Wagenknecht, namely her populist communication. Exploring Wagenknecht’s and BSW’s populist appeal helps us to understand why the party is said to also have potential among seemingly different voter groups coming from the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and far left Die Linke, which share high levels of populist attitudes. To analyse the role that populist communication plays for Wagenknecht and the BSW, this article combines quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative analysis covers all speeches (10,000) and press releases (19,000) published by Die Linke members of Parliament (MPs; 2005–2023). The results show that Wagenknecht is the (former) Die Linke MP with the highest share of populist communication. Furthermore, she was also able to convince a group of populist MPs to join the BSW. The article closes with a qualitative analysis of BSW’s manifesto that reveals how populist framing plays a major role in this document, in which the political and economic elites are accused of working against the interest of “the majority”. Based on this analysis, the classification of the BSW as a populist party seems to be appropriate. N2 - Die langjährige Stabilität des deutschen Parteiensystems wird aktuell durch eine neue links-konservative Partei herausgefordert: Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW). Erste Umfragen deuten an, dass das BSW bundesweit bis zu 10 % der Stimmen gewinnen könnte. Die Einordnung als links-konservativ oder in Anlehnung an die englische Literatur links-autoritär wurde bereits medial intensiv diskutiert. Weniger Beachtung hat bislang die populistische Kommunikation von Wagenknecht gefunden. Die populistische Ansprache durch das BSW kann bei der Beantwortung der Frage behilflich sein, warum das BSW scheinbar gegensätzliche Gruppen wie Wähler:innen der Linken und der AfD gleichzeitig ansprechen kann, da populistische Einstellungen unter den Wähler:innen beider Parteien weit verbreitet sind. Der vorliegende Beitrag analysiert die Rolle der populistischen Kommunikation von Wagenknecht und dem BSW mithilfe qualitativer und quantitativer Methoden. Dazu wurden zunächst alle Reden (ca. 10.000) und alle Pressemitteilungen (ca. 19.000) aller Linken-Bundestagsabgeordneten der gesamten parlamentarischen Lebensdauer der Fraktion (2005–2023) untersucht. Die Ergebnisse dieser quantitativen Analyse zeigen, dass Wagenknecht unter den Linken-Abgeordneten mit Abstand am häufigsten populistische Kommunikationselemente einsetzte und sie ebenso in der Lage war, einige der populistischsten Abgeordneten zum BSW-Beitritt zu überreden. Der Artikel schließt mit einer qualitativen Auswertung der populistischen Rhetorik im BSW-Parteiprogramm. Es wird deutlich, dass hier insbesondere die Kritik an der Politik- und Wirtschaftselite eine wichtige Rolle spielt. Diese Elitenkritik wird mit einem starken Bevölkerungsbezug kombiniert, der beispielsweise in der Ansprache der „Mehrheit“ deutlich wird. Insgesamt erscheint damit die Klassifizierung als populistische Partei gerechtfertigt. KW - populism KW - Germany KW - BSW KW - mixed methods KW - new parties KW - Populismus KW - Deutschland KW - neue Parteien Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11615-024-00544-z SN - 0032-3470 SN - 1862-2860 PB - Springer VS CY - Wiesbaden ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Thomeczek, Jan Philipp T1 - The voting potential of Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht JF - Political studies review N2 - A new challenger seeks to enter the German party system: Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW). With her new party, former Die Linke politician Sahra Wagenknecht combines a left-authoritarian profile (economically left-leaning, but culturally conservative) with anti-US, pro-Russia and anti-elitist stances. This article provides the first large-n academic study of the voter potential of this new party by using a quasi-representative sample (n = 6,000) drawn from a Voting Advice Application-like dataset that comes from a website designed to explore the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht’s positions. The results show that congruence with foreign policy positions and anti-elitism are strong predictors of the propensity to vote for the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht. In contrast, social/welfare and immigration policies are less predictive for assessing the party’s potential. Among the different socio-demographic groups, the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht has a strong potential among baby boomers, the less educated and East Germans. Regarding party voters, the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht is favoured by supporters of some minor parties like dieBasis, Freie Wähler and Die PARTEI, but also non-voters. Among the established parties, the party’s potential is high among Die Linke voters and, to a lesser extent, voters of the Social democrats (SPD) and Alternative for Germany (AfD). A potential below the average is reported for the supporters of the Liberals (FDP) and Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and most clearly for Green and Volt voters. KW - BSW KW - voting potential KW - Germany KW - populism Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/14789299241264975 SN - 1478-9299 SN - 1478-9302 SP - 1 EP - 9 PB - Sage Publications CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sorgner, Alina A1 - Fritsch, Michael A1 - Kritikos, Alexander T1 - Do entrepreneurs really earn less? JF - Small business economics : an international journal N2 - Based on large representative German household survey data, we compare incomes of the self-employed with those of paid employees. We find that the entrepreneurial income gap is largest for those holding a tertiary degree, but in two directions: positive for employers (self-employed with further employees) and negative for solo entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs holding a tertiary degree also face the greatest income variation. However, some solo self-employed earn more than their employed counterparts, in particular those with a university entrance degree as the highest level of education. KW - Income KW - Entrepreneurship KW - Self-employment KW - Germany Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-017-9874-6 SN - 0921-898X SN - 1573-0913 VL - 49 SP - 251 EP - 272 PB - Springer CY - Dordrecht ER -