Brazil has to quickly expand its power generation capacities due to significant growth of demand. Government plans aim at adding hydropower capacities in Northern Brazil, additional to wind and thermal power generation capacities. However, new hydropower may affect environmentally and socially...

Ambitious renewable energy targets have been implemented in the EU that can only be attained if further measures are taken to boost biomass production for energy uses on agricultural land. The aim of this discussion paper is to explore consequences for land use and environment if biomass...

Austria aims at increasing its share of renewable energy production by 11% until 2020. Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plants fired by forest wood can significantly contribute to attaining this target. However, the spatial distribution of biomass supply and of heat demand limits the potentials of...

The phasing-out of the EU milk quota regime in 2015 challenges the Austrian milk sector and calls for its re-organization. Private raw milk management systems and contracts between milk producers and milk processors and traders will replace the national milk quota regime. The aim of the study is...

Weder die 2008 ausgebrochene Finanzkrise, noch die in den Medien laut gewordene Kritik, noch Einwürfe vereinzelter heterodoxer Ökonomen und wohl noch viel weniger die von den Betroffenen selbst, also den Studierenden, geäußerten Zweifel an der Sinnhaftigkeit der orthodoxen Ökonomie haben...

Dieses Diskussionspapier präsentiert am Beispiel des Forschungsprojektes „Selbstbild und Fremdbild der Bäuerinnen in Südtirol“, das in Kooperation der Universität für Bodenkultur Wien und der Freien Universität Bozen durchgeführt wurde, einen zweistufigen methodischen Ansatz zur...

Gender issues receive increasing attention in rural sociology in Austria. Both the number of studies and the variety of themes are increasing. The paper reviews the different phases of the study of gender issues in rural sociology in Austria. One focus is wheter the intention of new women´s...

(englisch) The topic of this paper is the long term development of Austrian organic farms. On basis of two serial in-depth interviews with farm families the development of 74 organic farms in Austria was reconstructed over a period of 14 years and 15 distinct farm development patterns were...

The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) links a variety of existing and future observation systems and forecasting models into one comprehensive system of systems to provide accurate environmental data and to enable an encompassing vision and understanding of the Earth system....

Crop rotations are an important factor for the design and implementation of sustainable agricultural systems. Integrated agricultural land use models increasingly acknowledge the role of crop rotations by assessing economic and environmental impacts of agricultural production systems. However,...