David C. Finger

Reykjavik University · School of Science and Engineering

Hydropower accounts for about 20% of the worldwide electrical power production. In mountainous regions this ratio is significantly higher. In this study we present how future projected climatic forcing, as described in regional climate models (RCMs), will affect water resources and subsequently hydropower production in downstream hydropower plants...

The assessment of snow, glacier and rainfall runoff contribution to discharge in mountain streams is of major importance for an adequate water resource management. Such contributions can be estimated via hydrological models, provided that the modeling adequately accounts for snow and glacier melt, as well as rainfall runoff. We present a multi-data...

During the second half of the 20th century untreated sewage released from housing and industry into natural waters led to a degradation of many freshwater lakes and reservoirs worldwide. In order to mitigate eutrophication, wastewater treatment plants, including Fe-induced phosphorus precipitation, were implemented throughout the industrialized wor...

Retention in upstream storage dams results in modified riverine water and particle discharge patterns. Particularly, suspended solids input and intrusion dynamics in downstream lakes are affected by dam operations. In a case study, size-dependent particle budgets for peri-alpine Lake Brienz (Switzerland), downstream of major ydropower installations...

The growing number of normative acts regarding waste management determines the difficulty of the process of internalization and compliance with environmental obligations. From this point of view, those involved in waste management, no matter they are legal persons or individuals, especially in rural area, might have a passive failure to comply with...

In this article, the main aspects of a managerial nature are presented and analyzed, as well as the results of an international cooperation project in the field of environmental education in which universities from Romania and Iceland participated. Creating open educational resources and accessing them through an online learning platform is a good...

The presented research aims to study how environmental projects are implemented in a comparative approach based on case studies from very different national contexts (Romania and Iceland) so as to reveal the elements of good practices that constitute a common heritage for organizations involved in carrying out such projects in the future. From a me...

Hydrogen can play a key role in decarbonizing industrial and transportation processes. As the European demand for hydrogen rises, several EU member states have been looking into ways to import remotely-produced hydrogen (H2) to fulfill their local needs. This cradle-to-gate LCA study assesses the H2 production in Iceland using local renewable energ...

To ensure the successful implementation of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS), it is essential to assess the perception of key stakeholders. To visualize the perception of NBS key stakeholders and to identify potential opportunities and eventual conflicting interests, five groups of stakeholders were identified: i) academics, ii) governments, iii) NGOs,...

In light of the circular economy gaining momentum, plastics recycling is regarded as a key solution to keep materials in the loop. Continuous efforts are needed to achieve the packaging waste recycling targets set by the European Union. Hence, this work evaluates the potential of the Icelandic plastics value chain for enhanced recycling rates. In a...

Carbon capture and utilization (CCU) technologies support future energy and climate transition goals by recycling carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions. The use of biogenic CO 2 from renewable sources, is an avenue for the production of fully renewable products. Fossil-based materials can potentially be replaced in the long term while allowing for the u...

Water bodies, especially those artificial, have great potential to deploy more photovoltaic (PV) systems. Deployment of PV systems on water bodies has twofold benefits, reducing water losses due to evaporation and higher energy yield due to the cooling effect of the water. Albania has more than 800 artificial lakes built mainly for irrigation purpo...

The spread of invasive insect species causes enormous ecological damage and economic losses worldwide. A reliable method that tracks back an invaded insect's origin would be of great use to entomologists, phytopathologists, and pest managers. The spongy moth (Lymantria dispar, Linnaeus 1758) is a persistent invasive pest in the Northeastern United...

Drought events and their impacts vary spatially and temporally due to diverse pedo-climatic and hydrologic conditions, as well as variations in exposure and vulnerability, such as demographics and response actions. While hazard severity and frequency of past drought events have been studied in detail, little is known about the effect of drought man...

The major event that hit Europe in summer 2021 reminds society that floods are recurrent and among the costliest and deadliest natural hazards. The long-term flood risk management (FRM) efforts preferring sole technical measures to prevent and mitigate floods have shown to be not sufficiently effective and sensitive to the environment. Nature-Based...

Traditional engineering courses at leading universities still frequently focus on specific fields such as the design and building of machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. Ongoing research reveals that present environmental challenges require an interdisciplinary engineering approach, acco...

An increasing world population is projected to increase water, energy and food requirements, three vital resources for humankind. Projected climate change impacts will aggravate water availability, as well as flood risks, especially in urban areas. Nature-based solutions (NBS) have been identified as key concepts to defuse the expected tensions wit...

The geothermal energy potential in the Balkan area includes locations in Slovenia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although the potential for clean, cost-efficient, and renewable geothermal heating energy is well known, exploitation of geothermal sources is still hampering. According to the existing surveys, mappings,...

Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) have been proven to effectively mitigate and solve resource depletion and climate-related challenges in urban areas. The COST (Cooperation in Science and Technology) Action CA17133 entitled “Implementing nature-based solutions (NBS) for building a resourceful circular city” has established seven urban circularity challe...

Drought events and their impacts vary spatially and temporally due to diverse pedo-climatic and hydrologic conditions, as well as variations in exposure and vulnerability, such as demographics and response actions. While hazardous severity and frequency of past drought events have been studied in detail, little is known about the effect of drought...

Environmental Education is essential to promote awareness and facilitate the development of environmental citizens. To contribute to the enhancement of environmental awareness, Ice-land, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Romania have collaborated in joint educational projects which aim at building capacities on sustainable development, delivering...

Improved value generation and efficient use of resources are important steps national economies can implement to minimize the use of resources and mitigate the creation of waste and toxic emissions. The increase of resource efficiency is eminent to tackle the imminent challenges of depleting resources and the emerging environmental crisis. In this...

A framework developed by the COST Action Circular City (an EU-funded network of 500+ scientists from 40+ countries; COST = Cooperation in Science and Technology) for addressing Urban Circularity Challenges (UCCs) with nature-based solutions (NBSs) was analyzed by various urban sectors which refer to different fields of activities for circular manag...

Hydrological models are crucial tools in water and environmental resource management but they require careful calibration based on observed data. Model calibration remains a challenging task, especially if a multi-objective or multi-dataset calibration is necessary to generate realistic simulations of multiple flow components under consideration. I...

The European Union is planning a new program to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. In this context, the Icelandic government plans to ban new registrations of fossil fuel cars after 2030 as one of the strategies to make Iceland a carbon-neutral country by 2040. Upgraded biogas can be directly used in vehicles with CNG engines, reducing CO2 emissio...

In this work, we present the results of element content in river sediments and soil of the Rangárvellir river in southern Iceland as well as in the volcano ash from the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in 2010. Severe natural catastrophes have devastating impact on the environment. We selected the Rangárvellir area located in the vicinity of Mt Hekla, Ice...

Changes in climate, land use, and land management impact the occurrence and severity of wildland fires in many parts of the world. This is particularly evident in Europe, where ongoing changes in land use have strongly modified fire patterns over the last decades. Although satellite data by the European Forest Fire Information System provide large-...

Doppler lidars are used worldwide for wind monitoring and recently also for the detection of aerosols. Automatic algorithms that classify the lidar signals retrieved from lidar measurements are very useful for the users. In this study, we explore the value of machine learning to classify backscattered signals from Doppler lidars using data from Ice...

Im Rahmen der Dekarbonisierung ist Erdgas mittel- bis langfristig durch klimaneutrale Gase in physischer Form zu substituieren und nicht lediglich über Herkunftsnachweise (Zertifikate) zu ökologisieren. Eine vielversprechende Möglichkeit für die Aufskalierung der erneuerbaren Gase ist die Erzeugung mittels der Power-to-X-Technologie aus Regionen mi...

The evaluation of the stakeholders’ perception of new hydropower projects is essential for assessing public acceptance, ensuring local involvement, and identifying feasible and desirable changes towards sustainable development. This study uses the concept of causal diagrams (CD) to identify the individual perspectives of stakeholders of two new hyd...

Ground-based lidars and ceilometers are widely used for dust and volcanic ash observation around the world. This is particularly interesting in Iceland where high-altitude dust events occur frequently during strong wind conditions and volcanic eruptions. To explore the possible application of such technologies in Iceland for monitoring dust events,...

BACKGROUND Biogas is a valuable carbon‐free renewable energy source that can be produced from anaerobic digestion of organic waste. Accordingly, biogas production is promoted worldwide in efforts to reduce carbon emissions and optimizing the recovery of resources from waste streams. In this paper the biogas production from bio residues collected in...

Connectivity has emerged as a significant conceptual framework for understanding the transfer of surface water and sediment through landscapes. The concept has been widely adopted in the field of catchment hydrology but has also been valuable to investigate rates of soil erosion by water and sediment export across landscapes. To study connectivity,...

The temporal and spatial scale of atmospheric turbulence can be highly dynamic, requiring sophisticated methods for adequate detection and monitoring with high resolution. Doppler light detection and ranging (lidar) systems have been widely used to observe and monitor wind velocity and atmospheric turbulence profiles as Doppler lidar systems can pr...

In circular economic theories, the primary goal is not to create cycles of material and energy flows (these are already known), but to transform business processes into sustainable, closed-loop resource systems. As long as the basic mechanisms of business models and business innovation planning do not support circular operating principles, material...

Circular solutions are essential to tackle the imminent challenges of depleting resources and emerging environmental problems. The complex nature of material and energy systems and the changing economic and technological conditions depend on regional settings and accordingly result differently in developed and rapidly developing countries of the wo...

Soil degradation and subsequent soil erosion is a major threat to vital ecosystem services, to food production, and finally to human societies. This threat is particularly imminent in subarctic Iceland and tropical Ethiopia. Both countries underwent large-scale deforestation in the past. Especially in Ethiopia, the demand for wood for cooking, heat...

Manually collected snow data are often considered as ground truth for many applications such as climatological or hydrological studies. However, there are many sources of uncertainty that are not quantified in detail. For the determination of water equivalent of snow cover (SWE), different snow core samplers and scales are used, but they are all ba...

The benefits of fractional snow cover area, as an additional dataset for calibration, were evaluated for an Icelandic catchment with a low degree of glaciation and limited data. For this purpose, a Hydrological Projections for the Environment (HYPE) model was calibrated for the Geithellnaá catchment in southeast Iceland using daily discharge (Q) da...

This chapter examines the relationship between knowledge and Environmental Citizenship. Knowledge has been attributed to have an essential role in influencing pro-environmental behaviour and as such in the development of Environmental Citizenship. We argue that the ‘right’ kind of environmental knowledge is a necessary precondition for pro-environm...

Our modern cities are resource sinks designed on the current linear economic model which recovers very little of the original input. As the current model is not sustainable, a viable solution is to recover and reuse parts of the input. In this context, resource recovery using nature-based solutions (NBS) is gaining popularity worldwide. In this spe...

Nature-based solutions (NBS) can protect, manage and restore natural or modified ecosystems. They are a multidisciplinary, integrated approach to address societal challenges and some natural hazards effectively and adaptively, simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits. NBS applications can be easily noticed in circular cit...

Anaerobic digestion of urban organic wastes, farming slurries or sewage sludge is a common practice in waste treatment plants. In the city of Reykjavik, the organic waste fraction constituted by 60% of biomass and 40% of food waste will be transformed by the local waste company SORPA providing biofuel for up to 10% of the cars. Such measures belong...

Recent climate change observations and projections reveal an intensification of weather patterns, leading to severe floods and droughts in most parts of the world. The intensification of weather patterns could mitigate the effectiveness of flood protection infrastructures such as dams, levees and flood channels. Numerous studies have highlighted th...

Ecosystems that are in equilibrium provide vital resources to local inhabitants, including protection from naturally occurring disasters. [...]

Recent climate change observations and projections reveal an intensification of weather patterns, leading to severe floods and droughts in most parts of the world. The intensification of weather patterns could mitigate the effectiveness of flood protection infrastructures such as dams, levees and flood channels. Numerous studies have highlighted th...

The monitoring of restoration and forestation is essential to reduce future drought and flood risk as well as ongoing carbon sequestration projects in Iceland. This is especially relevant for Iceland’s efforts to become carbon neutral by 2040. Such a monitoring can be done by using the state-of-art remote sensing technology, using remotely sensed d...

Pyrolysis is a thermochemical process that consists of the degradation of organic polymers and biomass minerals in lignocellulose materials. At low pyrolysis temperature (300–400 °C), primarily carbon is produced during the reaction time. Rapid pyrolysis takes place at temperatures between 500 and 650 °C. If the temperature is higher than 700 °C, t...

Anaerobic digestion of urban organic wastes, farming slurries or sewage sludge is a common practice in waste treatment plants. In the city of Reykjavik, the organic waste fraction constituted by 60 % of biomass and 40 % of food waste will be transformed by the local waste company SORPA providing biofuel for up to 10 % of the cars. Such measure belo...

In this work we use chemical fingerprints as characteristics ratios of specific crustal elements Ca/Al, Fe/Al, K/Al, Mg/Al, Mn/Al, Ca/Fe, and Mg/Fe to investigate the long-range transport of volcanic aerosols from Iceland. Volcanic dust enters the atmosphere during suspension processes from Icelandic deserts, but mainly from the dust hot spots in r...

This chapter provides recommendations from the HarmoSnow field campaigns, including details of three water equivalent of snow cover intercomparison experiments. Crucial insights from the field, as well as lessons learnt from measurements performed with different instruments by several observers, are discussed.

This chapter is based on outcomes of the working group 3 Questionnaire of the COST Action ES1404 (www.harmosnow.eu) and provides a discussion of snow data assimilation in research and operational applications, which will be presented in detail in a manuscript (Helmert et al., 2018).

This paper is the outcome of a community initiative to identify major unsolved scientific problems in hydrology motivated by a need for stronger harmonisation of research efforts. The procedure involved a public consultation through on-line media, followed by two workshops through which a large number of potential science questions were collated, p...

CALL for PUBLICATION Special Issue "Circular Use of Resources - Theoretical and Practical Approaches of Sustainable Technologies, Business Models and Organizational Innovations" Special Issue Information Dear Colleagues, Circular solutions are essential to tackle the eminent challenges of depleting resources and emerging environmental problems. T...

The temporal and spatial scale of atmospheric turbulence is very dynamic, requiring an adequate method to detect and monitor turbulence with high resolution. Doppler Light Detection and Ranging (lidar) systems have been used widely to observe and monitor wind velocity and atmospheric turbulence profiles. Lidar systems can provide continuous informa...

The estimation of water resources in ungauged areas is of major importance to develop adequate and sustainable water management strategies. Hydrological modelling can provide a powerful tool to assimilate hydro-meteorological data and estimate the total amount of water available from ungauged areas. Satellite images provide important information on...

The European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action ES1404 "HarmoSnow", entitled, "A European network for a harmonized monitoring of snow for the benefit of climate change scenarios, hydrology and numerical weather prediction" (2014-2018) aims to coordinate efforts in Europe to harmonize approaches to validation, and methodologies of s...

The project: East and South European Network for Invasive Alien Species – A tool to support the management of alien species in Bulgaria (ESENIAS‑TOOLS) was implemen‑ted in the period 2015‑2017. The project was funded by the Financial Mechanism of the European Economic Area 2009‑2014, within the Programme BG03 Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, an...

Preliminary results of the STSM in Iceland within the COST Action 16209 entitled as Natural Flood Retention on Private Land represented in Management Committee meeting and Workshop of LAND4FLOOD COST Action in Riga

Water- and sediment-transfer models are commonly used to explain or predict patterns in the landscape at scales different from those at which observations are available. These patterns are often the result of emergent properties that occur because processes of water and sediment transfer are connected in different ways. Recent advances in geomorpho...

Study region: The hydropower reservoir of Gigerwald is located in the alpine valley Calfeisental in eastern Switzerland. The lake is fed by runoff from rain, snow melt and ice melt from a few small glaciers, as well as by water collected in a neighbouring valley. Study focus: Water resources in the Alps are projected to undergo substantial changes...

The rehabilitation and restoration of land is a key strategy to recover services -goods and resources- ecosystems offer to the humankind. This paper reviews key examples to understand the superior effect of nature based solutions to enhance the sustainability of catchment systems by promoting desirable soil and landscape functions. The use of conce...

The stalked diatom Didymosphenia geminata is an invasive species in the running waters of Iceland since the 1990s. Here we present an analysis of the morphology of this species from the River Elliðaár catchment, southwestern Iceland by scanning electron microscopy together with its nomenclatural history.