Review: 16th Sparkling-Science-Spotlight

Edwin Herzberger (Federal Research Center for Forests) and Barbara Birli (Federal Environment Agency) presented the “City-Tree-Soil” project, which investigates the effects of the urban environment on tree growth and soil carbon. Schoolchildren and other citizen scientists continuously monitor the thickness growth of trees using special measuring tapes (dendrometers); the readings are sent to a tree database via a QR code on a cell phone. This means that urban climate protection measures can be better planned and the results can contribute to improving national greenhouse gas reporting.

Hannes Schweiger, Miriam Weidl and Jelena Altomare (University of Vienna) presented the project “SAG S MULTI - Self-empowerment through multilingualism”. The central partner here is the speech competition “SAG'S MULTI”, which offers young people a stage on which they can demonstrate their skills in German and another language. Language biographical interviews with selected participants and winners of the speech competition serve to investigate the extent to which “SAG'S MULTI” has a self-empowering effect.

The recording of the speeches is available to watch on YouTube.

Upcoming Spotlights

• 10 April 2025, 13:00-14:00, Sparkling Science Spotlight with the projects “BiodiverCITY-Island Hopping” and “CHANGE” 

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• 8 May 2025, 13:00-14:00 Sparkling Science Spotlight with the projects “Forest Groove” and “Hybrid teaching-learning spaces in schools” 

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• 12 June 2025, 13:00-14:00, Sparkling Science Spotlight with the projects “DIAG_NOSE” and “MultilinguA.I.” 

  Registration