@phdthesis{Waha2012,
  author    = {Waha, Katharina},
  title     = {Climate change impacts on agricultural vegetation in sub-Saharan Africa},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-64717},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2012},
  abstract  = {Agriculture is one of the most important human activities providing food and more agricultural goods for seven billion people around the world and is of special importance in sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of people depends on the agricultural sector for their livelihoods and will suffer from negative climate change impacts on agriculture until the middle and end of the 21st century, even more if weak governments, economic crises or violent conflicts endanger the countries' food security. The impact of temperature increases and changing precipitation patterns on agricultural vegetation motivated this thesis in the first place. Analyzing the potentials of reducing negative climate change impacts by adapting crop management to changing climate is a second objective of the thesis. As a precondition for simulating climate change impacts on agricultural crops with a global crop model first the timing of sowing in the tropics was improved and validated as this is an important factor determining the length and timing of the crops´ development phases, the occurrence of water stress and final crop yield. Crop yields are projected to decline in most regions which is evident from the results of this thesis, but the uncertainties that exist in climate projections and in the efficiency of adaptation options because of political, economical or institutional obstacles have to be considered. The effect of temperature increases and changing precipitation patterns on crop yields can be analyzed separately and varies in space across the continent. Southern Africa is clearly the region most susceptible to climate change, especially to precipitation changes. The Sahel north of 13° N and parts of Eastern Africa with short growing seasons below 120 days and limited wet season precipitation of less than 500 mm are also vulnerable to precipitation changes while in most other part of East and Central Africa, in contrast, the effect of temperature increase on crops overbalances the precipitation effect and is most pronounced in a band stretching from Angola to Ethiopia in the 2060s. The results of this thesis confirm the findings from previous studies on the magnitude of climate change impact on crops in sub-Saharan Africa but beyond that helps to understand the drivers of these changes and the potential of certain management strategies for adaptation in more detail. Crop yield changes depend on the initial growing conditions, on the magnitude of climate change, and on the crop, cropping system and adaptive capacity of African farmers which is only now evident from this comprehensive study for sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore this study improves the representation of tropical cropping systems in a global crop model and considers the major food crops cultivated in sub-Saharan Africa and climate change impacts throughout the continent.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Bajerski2013,
  author    = {Bajerski, Felizitas},
  title     = {Bacterial communities in glacier forefields of the Larsemann Hills, East Antarctica : structure, development \& adaptation},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-67424},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2013},
  abstract  = {Antarctic glacier forfields are extreme environments and pioneer sites for ecological succession. The Antarctic continent shows microbial community development as a natural laboratory because of its special environment, geographic isolation and little anthropogenic influence. Increasing temperatures due to global warming lead to enhanced deglaciation processes in cold-affected habitats and new terrain is becoming exposed to soil formation and accessible for microbial colonisation. This study aims to understand the structure and development of glacier forefield bacterial communities, especially how soil parameters impact the microorganisms and how those are adapted to the extreme conditions of the habitat. To this effect, a combination of cultivation experiments, molecular, geophysical and geochemical analysis was applied to examine two glacier forfields of the Larsemann Hills, East Antarctica. Culture-independent molecular tools such as terminal restriction length polymorphism (T-RFLP), clone libraries and quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) were used to determine bacterial diversity and distribution. Cultivation of yet unknown species was carried out to get insights in the physiology and adaptation of the microorganisms. Adaptation strategies of the microorganisms were studied by determining changes of the cell membrane phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) inventory of an isolated bacterium in response to temperature and pH fluctuations and by measuring enzyme activity at low temperature in environmental soil samples. The two studied glacier forefields are extreme habitats characterised by low temperatures, low water availability and small oligotrophic nutrient pools and represent sites of different bacterial succession in relation to soil parameters. The investigated sites showed microbial succession at an early step of soil formation near the ice tongue in comparison to closely located but rather older and more developed soil from the forefield. At the early step the succession is influenced by a deglaciation-dependent areal shift of soil parameters followed by a variable and prevalently depth-related distribution of the soil parameters that is driven by the extreme Antarctic conditions. The dominant taxa in the glacier forefields are Actinobacteria, Acidobacteria, Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Cyanobacteria and Chloroflexi. The connection of soil characteristics with bacterial community structure showed that soil parameter and soil formation along the glacier forefield influence the distribution of certain phyla. In the early step of succession the relative undifferentiated bacterial diversity reflects the undifferentiated soil development and has a high potential to shift according to past and present environmental conditions. With progressing development environmental constraints such as water or carbon limitation have a greater influence. Adapting the culturing conditions to the cold and oligotrophic environment, the number of culturable heterotrophic bacteria reached up to 108 colony forming units per gram soil and 148 isolates were obtained. Two new psychrotolerant bacteria, Herbaspirillum psychrotolerans PB1T and Chryseobacterium frigidisoli PB4T, were characterised in detail and described as novel species in the family of Oxalobacteraceae and Flavobacteriaceae, respectively. The isolates are able to grow at low temperatures tolerating temperature fluctuations and they are not specialised to a certain substrate, therefore they are well-adapted to the cold and oligotrophic environment. The adaptation strategies of the microorganisms were analysed in environmental samples and cultures focussing on extracellular enzyme activity at low temperature and PLFA analyses. Extracellular phosphatases (pH 11 and pH 6.5), β-glucosidase, invertase and urease activity were detected in the glacier forefield soils at low temperature (14°C) catalysing the conversion of various compounds providing necessary substrates and may further play a role in the soil formation and total carbon turnover of the habitat. The PLFA analysis of the newly isolated species C. frigidisoli showed that the cold-adapted strain develops different strategies to maintain the cell membrane function under changing environmental conditions by altering the PLFA inventory at different temperatures and pH values. A newly discovered fatty acid, which was not found in any other microorganism so far, significantly increased at decreasing temperature and low pH and thus plays an important role in the adaption of C. frigidisoli. This work gives insights into the diversity, distribution and adaptation mechanisms of microbial communities in oligotrophic cold-affected soils and shows that Antarctic glacier forefields are suitable model systems to study bacterial colonisation in connection to soil formation.},
  language  = {en}
}