© HZB/K. Haas (alle Fotos)
They are back: Sheep and goats graze the Wannsee campus again
The meadows are lush green, the ice saints (almost) over: Now is the perfect time for the sheep and goats to return from their winter quarters! Until late autumn, they will now graze the near-natural HZB campus in Wannsee and serve the natural preservation of the landscape - completely without a lawn mower.
The meadows are lush green, the ice saints (almost) over: Now is the perfect time for the sheep and goats to return from their winter quarters! Until late autumn, they will now graze the near-natural HZB campus in Wannsee and serve the natural preservation of the landscape - completely without a lawn mower.
On 14 May 2020, shepherd Olaf Kolecki brought his "protégé" back to the Wannsee campus. Among them are five sheep (4 white Skudden and one black Skudden-Pomeranian Landschaf crossbreed, five lambs (3 white Skudden lambs and 2 black lambs, mother is the crossbreed) and five goats (2 Boer goats, the brown and the brown-white and three goat lambs).
Since goats and sheep have different food preferences, this mixture is just right for maintaining the green areas. The grazing is particularly insect-friendly and contributes to increasing the biodiversity of the wild meadows. And also many employees have grown fond of the animals over the past year and have missed the bleating on the campus a little bit in the last weeks.
In an interview (GER) last year the shepherd answered many questions about his work.
Before the arrival of the sheep and goats, the fenced-in eastern area in Wannsee was still being cleaned up. At the beginning of the year the old meadow orchard was "revived". For this purpose, sheds were torn down and some trees were felled to give the old fruit trees more light again. The wood of the felled trees was piled up in several deadwood heaps. This has created an important habitat and refuge for insects and small animals.
Sustainability at HZB on the Intranet
The HZB is intensively engaged in sustainable action and research. An overview of the topics and measures can be found on the newly designed intranet pages on sustainability (GER).
- Electrical energy storage: BAM, HZB, and HU Berlin plan joint Berlin Battery LabThe Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM), the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB), and Humboldt University of Berlin (HU Berlin) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to establish the Berlin Battery Lab. The lab will pool the expertise of the three institutions to advance the development of sustainable battery technologies. The joint research infrastructure will also be open to industry for pioneering projects in this field.
- Battery research: visualisation of aging processes operandoLithium button cells with electrodes made of nickel-manganese-cobalt oxides (NMC) are very powerful. Unfortunately, their capacity decreases over time. Now, for the first time, a team has used a non-destructive method to observe how the elemental composition of the individual layers in a button cell changes during charging cycles. The study, now published in the journal Small, involved teams from the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), the University of Münster, researchers from the SyncLab research group at HZB and the BLiX laboratory at the Technical University of Berlin. Measurements were carried out in the BLiX laboratory and at the BESSY II synchrotron radiation source.
- Green hydrogen: A cage structured material transforms into a performant catalystClathrates are characterised by a complex cage structure that provides space for guest ions too. Now, for the first time, a team has investigated the suitability of clathrates as catalysts for electrolytic hydrogen production with impressive results: the clathrate sample was even more efficient and robust than currently used nickel-based catalysts. They also found a reason for this enhanced performance. Measurements at BESSY II showed that the clathrates undergo structural changes during the catalytic reaction: the three-dimensional cage structure decays into ultra-thin nanosheets that allow maximum contact with active catalytic centres. The study has been published in the journal ‘Angewandte Chemie’.