The ZKfN year in pictures

We start our review of the year with a view. The ZKfN office staff started 2024 with this wonderful view from the old office space over the roofs of Braunschweig. In August, the view will be more summery. We promise.

HochNina – the Network for Sustainability at Lower Saxony Universities hosted its annual conference at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hannover. Katharina Zickwolf, managing director of the ZKfN, attended the network meeting.

The ZKfN has been active on LinkedIn since 22 May, providing information about current events at the centre and climate research in Lower Saxony several times a week. So far, we have acquired around 370 followers, for which we would like to express our sincere thanks.

In June, the sustainability action days TUmorrow Days were on the programme at Technische Universität Braunschweig. The ZKfN offered a workshop in which TU members could design the sustainable university of the future.

The new ZKfN homepage went live on 16 June. Since then, it has provided a central point of contact for anyone interested in finding out more about the centre and its climate future labs.

Welcome to ZKfN, DIVERSA, FoResLab, OPEN_CULTURES and Urban Climate Future Lab. These are the first four climate future labs at the ZKfN, the funding decision for which was announced on 26 June.

At the end of June, Mark Winter from the ZKfN team attended the annual conference of the German Association for Sustainability at Universities in Darmstadt. The ZKfN has been a member of this association since this year and, together with numerous other institutions, is committed to sustainable development at universities.

Urban areas and their microclimates are particularly affected by the effects of climate change. Therefore, this year's funding call, which was issued on 1 July, was aimed at projects on this topic. The new Climate Future Lab is scheduled to start in the summer of 2025.

In August, we were able to welcome Dr. Nora Roesky (on the right) to our team as our network management consultant. This completes the team at the ZKfN office. In addition to Mark Winter and Katharina Zickwolf, the team also includes Ketevan Gujejiani and Lena Harder, who support the ZKfN as student assistants.

As promised in January, here is the summery view.

The ZKfN office moved into its new premises at Pockelsstraße 7 in Braunschweig in September with a cargo bike and plenty of good humour. In the offices, the ZKfN team sits under one roof with the TU Braunschweig's Digitalisation and Sustainability Office, which also includes the Green Office.

In September, the focus was also on the high altitudes. During a forest excursion to a measuring site of the Climate Future Lab FoResLab, an eddy covariance tower was climbed, which measures the breath of the forest above the treetops.

The ZKfN visits the Climate Future Lab DIVERSA. In Göttingen, Katharina Zickwolf and Nora Roesky met Dr. Jonas Hagge, spokesperson for the Climate Future Lab, from the Nordwestdeutsche Forstliche Versuchsanstalt (Northwest German Forest Research Institute).

One archive of historical biodiversity is the Herbarium Ruperti, which was created in the late 17th century. With the support of the ZKfN, scientists from the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel and the Institute of Plant Biology at TU Braunschweig want to find out what this plant archive can tell us about historical biodiversity in the area of present-day Lower Saxony. The kick-off workshop for this exciting project took place on 15 October in Wolfenbüttel.

On the same day, the German Climate Day also took place in Berlin, in which Mark Winter participated for the ZKfN. This year's event, held in the immediate vicinity of the Brandenburg Gate, focused on how we strengthen what unites us in the climate debate.

Weiter ging es am 20. November mit dem „Auftakt Klimazukunft Niedersachsen“. Organisiert von der ZKfN-Geschäftsstelle bildete die Veranstaltung eine hervorragende Gelegenheit ihr Forschungsvorhaben vorzustellen und sich zu vernetzen.

Weiter ging es am 20. November mit dem „Auftakt Klimazukunft Niedersachsen“. Organisiert von der ZKfN-Geschäftsstelle bildete die Veranstaltung eine hervorragende Gelegenheit ihr Forschungsvorhaben vorzustellen und sich zu vernetzen.

The presentation of the research project had a small twist: using Lego, modelling clay and crayons, the climate future labs were asked to explain their project to a fictitious child, adult and senior citizen. Here, Prof. Dominik Seidel explains the climate future lab FoResLab to a senior citizen. Photo credit: Moritz Peters/ZKfN

There were also two premieres in November: the ZKfN went online with this first post on Instagram on 18 November...

... and on 21 November, the first issue of the ZKfN newsletter was published, which will henceforth provide information every two months about climate news, calls for proposals and current topics at the ZKfN. Sign up right away!

The opening ceremony for the new offices of the ZKfN and the Digital Transformation and Sustainability Office of the Technische Universität Braunschweig began with a welcoming address by Prof. Manfred Krafczyk, Vice President for Digital Transformation and Sustainability at Technische Universität Braunschweig, on 4 December.

The ZKfN team is taking a short Christmas break and wishes you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! We will be back on 6 January!