When I first contacted Bob in 2001 inquiring how I could include Industrial Ecology in my PhD thesis, he taught me how to apply the principle of Material Flow Analysis to track chemical substances and assess chemical process in terms of efficiency, dissipative losses, and recycling opportunities throughout their life cycle.
Gara Villalba presented her work in a session held in memory of Bob Ayres at the Industrial Ecology GORDON 2024 conference. Urban and peri-urban agriculture (UA) can provide locally grown food at low environmental impact by maximizing the recycling of nutrients from the city to agricultural lands.
Svetlana Khromova presented the first step of an integrated approach to informed Nature Based Solutions (NBS) at the CONEXUS Conference. The CONEXUS conference took place in Barcelona from May 15th to 17th, which aims to share the knowledge about nature-based urban solutions as a tool for urban planners.
Alba Badia showed a poster on “Modelling the effects of land use changes on the urban air quality: urbanization, urban vegetation, and agriculture” in which she discussed the air quality changes between the reference scenario and the scenarios that have been designed by the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB)’s office of urban planning.
Two URBAG presentations were shared at the conference by Ricard Segura-Barrero and Sergi Ventura. Both presentations followed the platform for Early Career Scientists (ECS). The first one was presented by Ricard Segura in the session "Urban climate, urban biometeorology, and science tools for cities". The second, presented by Sergi Ventura, was held in the session "Regional to local climate change, processes, impacts, and extremes".
As every year, the AGU Annual Meeting has taken place, bringing together more than 25,000 participants from over 100 countries. Scientists, policymakers, communicators... Everyone is welcome to share science and try to better understand our planet and environment. This year, thanks to the hybrid model that capitalizes on both personal and virtual participation, Gara Villalba presented her work.
On December 2023, URBAG participated at the VII International conference on Green Urbanism (GU 2023) with the presentation “Integrated System Analysis of Urban Vegetation and Agriculture: An Interdisciplinary and Participatory Decision Approach for Evaluating Nature-based Solutions Against Urban Vulnerabilities”.
Between May 9th and 11th, 2023, the European WRF-Chem Workshop has taken place in the Italian city of Lecce, in which the URBAG group participated. The URBAG researcher Alba Badia shared her work related to the atmospheric and chemical transport model Weather Research and Forecasting with Chemistry to the workshop participants.
As third year in a row, URBAG resarchers have participated in the EGU’s annual General Assembly EGU23, hosted in Vienna, Austria. Thanks to the hybrid format, over 18,831 registered attendees from 105 countries have shared each work throughout the week-long conference from 23-28 April 2023. Three URBAG presentations have been shared in the conference by Alba Badia, Ricard Segura and Sergi Ventura.
Title: Modelling the impacts of emission changes on O3 sensitivity, atmospheric oxidation capacity, and pollution transport over the Catalonia region / Tropospheric ozone (O3) is an important surface pollutant in urban areas, and it has complex formation mechanisms that depend on the atmospheric chemistry and on meteorological factors. The severe reductions observed in anthropogenic emissions during the COVID-19 pandemic can further our understanding of the photochemical mechanisms leading to O3 formation.
Proof-of-Concept funded through URBAG project, January 2024-June 2025. What is hindering nutrient circularity in urban argiculture? The impoverished state and quality of the urban and peri-urban agricultural soil undermines nutrient circularity. Nutrient recovery is of no use unless soil is healthy!!
On July 2023, URBAG participated at the X International Conference of Life Cycle Assessment in Latin America (CILCA 2023) with the presentation "Unlocking the potential of municipal solid waste compost for urban and peri-urban agriculture: Nutrient recirculation in metropolitan areas". It was the tenth edition of this conference, which is intended for users of tools based on life cycle thinking at different levels.