Wind and solar power are the predominant new sources of electrical power in recent years. Solar power reached a milestone of providing 50% of demand in Germany during one hour in 2012, and wind power during one hour in 2015 exceeded 140% of demand in Denmark. By their very nature, wind and solar power, as well as hydro, tidal, wave and other renewable forms of generation are dependent on weather and climate. Modelling and measurement for resource assessment, site selection, long-term and short term variability analysis and operational forecasting for horizons ranging from minutes to decades are of paramount importance.

The success of wind power means that wind turbines are increasingly put in sites with complex terrain or forests, with towers extending beyond the strict logarithmic profile, and in offshore regions that are difficult to model and measure. Major challenges for solar power are notably accurate measurements and the short-term prediction of the spatiotemporal evolution of the effects of cloud field and aerosols.

For both solar and wind power, the integration of large amounts of renewable energy into the grid is another critical research problem due to the uncertainties linked to their forecast and to patterns of their spatio-temporal variabilities.
Of particular interest these days is the relatively new field of urban meteorology applied to the renewable energy sector. There are several “Smart Cities” and “Smart Grids” projects in Europe focusing on urban modelling and measurement development for forecasts or high resolution resource mapping.

We invite contributions on all following aspects of weather dependent renewable power generation:

• Wind conditions (both resources and loads) on short and long time scales for wind power development, especially in complex environments (e.g. mountains, forests, coastal or urban).
• Long term analysis of inter-annual variability of solar and wind resource
• Typical Meteorological Year and probability of exceedance for wind and solar power development,
• Wind and solar resource and atlases.
• Wake effect models and measurements, especially for large wind farms and offshore.
• Performance and uncertainties of forecasts of renewable power at different time horizons and in different external conditions.
• Forecast of extreme wind events and wind ramps.
• Local, regional and global impacts of renewable energy power plants or of large-scale integration.
• Dedicated wind measurement techniques (SODARS, LIDARS, UAVs etc.).
• Dedicated solar measurement techniques (pyranometric sensors, sun-photometer, ceilometer, fish-eye cameras, etc.) from ground-based and space-borne remote sensing.
• Tools for urban area renewable energy supply strategic planning and control.

Geographic information systems are well established tools for the identification of potentials and the selection of optimal locations for installing renewable energies. A high and increasing number of studies present indicators of resource availability such as the amount of available biomass, average wind speed, cumulated solar radiation and soil temperature. These studies range from the determination of merely theoretical resources potentials to combined technical, economic, environmental and social studies of the suitability of energy generation technologies (e.g. wind parks, photovoltaic installations and biogas/biomass facilities) and they have reached high spatial detail.
However, the consideration of the temporal variability of the energy demand and of highly fluctuating sources, such as wind and solar radiation, is a fundamental element that has been addressed only marginally in GIS-based approaches. The consideration of these fluctuations, however, is paramount to evaluating and designing spatially distributed energy systems with a high share of renewable sources. GIS-based models extended by the temporal dimension can be used inter alia to:
• dimension distributed renewable energy systems such as virtual power plants
• analyse interactions and proportions of renewable energy power plants in distributed renewable energy systems
• assess extreme production events and associated backup mechanisms
• calculate peak load offsetting and output variability reduction technologies for grid connected and off-grid renewable energy systems
• size and locate decentralized storage facilities
• plan multicarrier systems (heat-electricity, heat-cooling-electricity)
• assess impacts of the choice of locations on a wide set of indicators which can be linked to both system stability as well as environmental and land-use issues
The objective of the session is to provide an insight in recent advances in GIS-based modelling for addressing the above mentioned topics. The session is not limited to planning related contributions, but also welcomes papers dedicated to policy-making, forecasting and real time applications concerning distributed renewable energy systems.

There is a global need for low carbon energy, and marine renewable energy could make a significant contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation of climate change, as well as providing a high-technology industry. Marine renewable energy includes offshore wind, wave, tidal range (lagoons and barrages), and tidal-stream energy. Understanding the environment these marine renewable energy devices are likely to operate in is essential when designing efficient and resilient devices; furthermore, accurately charactering the resource, and likely impacts, is essential for the development of the marine renewable energy industry. This session is designed to share information on new research techniques and methods to better understand the resource, and interactions between energy extraction, the resource, and the environment. We welcome contributions on resource characterization, design considerations (e.g. extreme and fatigue loadings), and environmental impacts, at all timescales (ranging from turbulence to decadal) and all spatial scales (from device and array scales to shelf sea scales); including mapping tools, numerical modelling approaches, and observations. The session will also include studies of impacts, from physical and biological, to societal interactions (e.g. effects to tourism). These impacts include biological interactions with the resource and with the device. Research areas are envisaged to include but not restricted to: modelling and quantification of the interaction of the device to the marine environment (e.g. changes in hydrodynamics) as well as on the biology directly; ecological study designs and methods; new technologies for quantification; management of space; collision; noise; habitat change; community change for all trophic levels interaction.

The outcomes of the COP21 negotiations in Paris and a range of national status reports on climate change vulnerabilities deliver a clear message. We are in need of clean and renewable sources of energy and raw materials and need to move towards a bio-economy in various sectors. This also includes concepts that combine approaches to realize net negative emissions, such as Bioenergy and Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). We welcome contributions introducing theoretical concepts, models or the development of methods as well as interdisciplinary and holistic approaches and case studies.
This session is open to contributions assessing aspects of biomass production and utilization with implications on different scales. We encourage abstracts with emphasis on land-use change impacts (e.g. species distribution and dynamics, invasive species, impacts on habitat quality), soils (e.g. nutrient depletion, acidification, carbon cycle), water (e.g. pollution, altering catchment water balances), and atmosphere (e.g. CO2 mitigation potentials, VOC’s emission of fast growing species, impact of urban biosphere on overall urban GHG emissions), with a holistic focus. We also welcome case studies that can provide insights for a more general application of the respective approaches.

This session is organized and planned by the Commission for Interdisciplinary Ecological Studies and Commission Climate and Air Quality of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and co-organized with the IUFRO Task-Force “Forest Biomass Network (FBN)” and its working group 7.01.03, Impacts of air pollution and climate change on forest ecosystems – Atmospheric deposition, soils and nutrient cycles.

With an increasing demand for low-carbon energy solutions, industrial development of geothermal resources is accelerating. Current advancements target conventional hydrothermal systems, as well as the more unconventional systems (e.g., Enhanced Geothermal Systems, super-hot, pressurized and co-produced, super-critical systems). Geothermal energy can be extracted from various, often complex geological settings, both on- and offshore, such as shallow wells in magmatic systems and deep wells focusing on sedimentary basins.

Optimum efficiency requires advanced understanding of the properties of the entire geothermal system, including thermo-/petro-physical conditions, fluid composition; structural and hydrological features; and engineering challenges (e.g., those produced by hydraulic stimulation / induced seismicity or related to multiphase fluids and scaling processes). This needs to be combined with knowledge of heat sources and recharge areas, and an integral understanding on how the different elements connect within one system. In geothermal exploration and production the integration of analogue field studies with real-life production data, from industrial as well as research sites, and the combination with numerical models (both as joint and constrained inversion), are a hot topic worldwide.

With this session we aim to gather field, laboratory and numerical experts who focus their research on geothermal sites, to stimulate discussion in this multi-disciplinary environment. We seek for contributions from all disciplines, ranging from field data (e.g., production and well data) to laboratory experiments and numerical models

The “numerical modeling in geothermics” session aims to be a platform for presentations regarding all kinds of numerical modeling in geothermics. It is open for studies of deep geothermal processes and near-surface applications alike.
Models can originate from all phases of geothermal projects: prediction of geothermal potentials, optimization of borehole locations as well as the study of processes in existing geothermal installations. They can encompass all areas relevant for geothermics such as thermal, hydraulic, mechanical and chemical processes. Models about enhancement (mechanical or chemical) for Enhanced Geothermal Systems are invited as well.
Contributions can range from innovative model applications to the discussion of an improved way to integrate data as well as to the development of new numerical approaches.
This session offers the possibility to discuss advances and difficulties in modeling geothermal processes and aims to stimulate new ideas for future work.

Society today demands sustainable technical solutions that reconcile the needs of society with those of nature . These solutions must coordinate between different and often competing demands within a sub-system (irrigation, ecological flow, power generation) and the variety of different uses of environmental resources across systems (e.g., power from water, wind, sun, or waves). Advances in modeling, optimization, and control will play an essential role in providing these solutions.

This session is intended for contributions on the technical aspects of modelling and control of environmental systems for a future, where complex real time coordination between different sub-systems will be the rule rather than the exception.

Examples of topics suitable for this session are:

• models of both environmental systems and of management practices that can be used to study the effects of new control algorithms;
• models and algorithms for adaptive and resilient operational management of environmental systems;
• innovative solutions that exploit synergies and avoid potential conflicts for multi-resource and multi-sector systems.


The session is associated with Panta Rhei working group "Natural and man-made control systems in water resources" and welcomes contributions addressing the above mentioned points, especially in the context of hybrid power systems and water resource systems used for irrigation, drainage, water supply (potable water, industrial water, cooling water) and transport of goods.

The transition to a low-carbon economy and programs of nuclear power phase-out will require the development of innovative methods to integrate renewable sources of energy while minimizing the additional pressure on closely connected ecosystems.

Hydropower is a mature and cost-competitive renewable energy source, which helps stabilize fluctuations between energy demand and supply. Depending on the relative capacities of the intermittent renewables and hydropower facilities, integration may require changes in the way hydropower facilities operate to provide balancing, reserves or energy storage. Moreover, non-power constraints on the hydropower system, such as irrigation water deliveries, environmental constraints, recreation, and flood control tend to reduce the ability of hydropower to integrate variable renewable. In this context, energy production relies on reliable short and long term predictions of the temporal availability and the quality of natural resources (water, wind, solar power etc).

This session solicits contributions that describe, characterize, or model distributed renewable energy sources at different spatial and temporal scales that are relevant for the electricity systems, their interactions, their planning and management. Spatial scales range from point scale (i.e. stand-alone system) to national and international scales. Temporal scales range from minutes to decades. Special attention will be devoted to the interactions between the energy-water system and the climate and hydrological variables that govern production in space and time. Of particular interest are case studies and other contributions of hydrology and power grid modernization initiatives to understand these complex interdependencies. The development of new modeling approaches to analyze interactions with climate-policy and power grid management options, socio-economic mitigation measures and land use are welcome, including experimental work to understand how energy production affects ecosystems.

We hope that the contributions to this session will highlight how hydrology and closely related methods can contribute to address urgent challenges in this field.
Questions of interest include:
- How to predict water availability for hydropower production?
- How to predict and quantify the space-time dependences and the positive/negative feedbacks between wind/solar energies, water cycle and hydropower?
- How to predict and quantify the influence of climate change on climate-related energies and the energy demand?
- How to quantify the relevant impacts on the hydropower sector?
- What energy-source transitions occur in view of climate and global change? How can they be modelled? How do energy, land use and water supply interact during transitions?
- How socio-economic aspects can be taken into account when modelling renewable energy sources?
- What policy requirements or climate strategies are needed to manage and mitigate risks in the transition?
- Quantification of energy production impacts on ecosystems such as hydropeaking effects on natural flow regimes, quantification of residual flow impacts on river ecosystems.

Soil organic matter (SOM) plays a key role not only in soil fertility and quality (by providing a number of physical, chemical, and biological benefits), but also in C cycling. The decline of SOM represents one of the most serious threats facing many arable lands of the world. Beside this, there is an imperative necessity of a sustainable management for the increasing quantity of organic waste. Crop residues and animal manures have long been successfully used as soil organic amendments to preserve and enhance SOM pools. During the last decade, pyrolysis (the combustion of biomass under low or no oxygen supply) is showing a promising approach for managing carbon-rich wastes such as sewage sludge, the pulp and paper industry residues or crop residues and to create added value co-products.
Besides serving as a source of organic matter and plant nutrients, these materials may contribute to fight plant diseases and reduce soil contamination, erosion, and desertification. A safe and useful application of organic amendments requires an in-depth scientific knowledge of their nature and impacts on the soil-plant system, as well as on the surrounding environment. While the benefits biochar or fly ashes as soil ameliorants and fertilizers are very well known, the knowledge of the use of other sorts of pyrogenic organic matter as well as the effects of biochar in SOM composition at a long term are very scarce.
This interdisciplinary session will focus on the current research and recent advances on the use of organic amendments including pyrogenic organic materials such as biochar or wood ash in modern agriculture as well as for the restoration of degraded soils, covering physical, chemical, biological, biochemical, environmental and socio-economical aspects by bringing together scientists from the diverse fields of soil, applied pyrolysis, bioenergy waste management, SOM characterization, carbon dynamics and plant nutrition.