The sustainable provision of enough nutritious food for a growing world population is pushing the food system towards finding new approaches to agriculture (Ockenden, et al., 2017). While the demand of animal products is rising (Armanda, Guinée, & Tukker, 2019), the negative effect on the climate, soil, …

The generation of food loss and waste is a topic that gained increasing attention over the past years. The most prominent estimate is that a third, or 1.3 billion tons, of the human food produced is wasted every year. The massive overproduction of food products on the one side and the malnutrition of …

Plasmid-mediated dissemination of antibiotic resistance among fecal Enterobacteriaceae in natural ecosystems may contribute to the persistence of antibiotic resistance genes in anthropogenically impacted environments. Plasmid transfer frequencies measured under laboratory conditions might lead to overestimation …

Out of the urgent need to monitor the status of soil salinization, the Zeeland government and Waterschap Scheldestromen established a salinity monitoring project called salt watcher. This thesis presents a research on the design of an automatic switch system, which is one of the 3 sub-projects of the …

The catchment area of the Bovenmark has a total area of almost 40,000 hectares. The catchment area consists of a number of subsystems (Bavelse Leij, Chaamse beek, Galderse beek, Strijbeekse beek and 't Merkske) that together form the catchment area of the Bovenmark. In the 1990s, many development projects …

Ever since lake Volkerak got its status as a partially closed-off lake in the late ‘80s, excessive (cyanobacterial) algae blooms in the summer period have been a consistently occurring problem. This research aims to investigate the location-specific effectiveness of wetlands and floodplains in nutrient …

Climate change can be described as both a natural and an artificial process that affects all life on earth. One of its consequences is the rising of sea levels which can cause problems in coastal areas, such as increasing the pressure of saline groundwater. Due to this increased pressure, this saline …

Permanent grassland soils can act as a sink for carbon and may therefore positively contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation. We compared young (5–15 years since latest grassland renewal) with old (>20 years since latest grassland renewal) permanent grassland soils in terms of carbon stock, …

Application of animal manure to soils results in the introduction of manure-derived bacteria and their antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) into soils. ResCap is a novel targeted-metagenomic approach that allows the detection of minority components of the resistome gene pool without the cost-prohibitive …

Climate change and changing land use challenge the livability and flood safety of Dutch cities. One option cities have to become more climate-proof is to increase infiltration of stormwater into soil through permeable pavement and thus reduce discharge of stormwater into sewer systems. To analyze the …