University of Zielona Góra (UZ)

The mission of the Institute of Environmental Engineering (IIS-UZG) is to provide modern and applicable solutions in efficient management of environmental resources. Its main scientific activity focuses on key issues related to three environmental components: water, soil and air. IIS-UZG is studying, analysing and modelling processes that occur during water and wastewater treatment; sewage sludge management; exploitation of soils in urban, industrial and post-mining areas. Its speciality is the optimization of the methane fermentation in biological treatment of wastes as a contribution to mitigation of the effects of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Institute of Sociology deals with contemporary society research and education in the field of sociology. It conducts ongoing and one-time empirical surveys, public opinion surveys, and case studies, comparative research studies, using modern methods of qualitative and quantitative research, while developing sociological theory and methodology. Research at the Institute also use information, concepts and methods taken from related scientific fields such as economics, ethnography, anthropology, political sciences, demography, social policy, gender research and environmental sciences.

The UZ team contributes to the DairyMix project as follows:

• WP2, “Case study farms” – UZ project team identifies suitable Polish farms to characterise mixed dairy farming in Eastern Central Europe. Experience from previous project MilKey will help UZ to identify very small (subsistence) farms that may be willing and able to provide the data required. Such small farms are typical in the southeast of Poland but also in several European Union member countries and are still poorly investigated. Data collection from these farms includes a technology survey describing the potential of manure treatment technologies in terms of circular processes on farms and plant availability of treated nutrients (technology outlook).
• WP3, “Carbon and nutrient circular mixed farming systems for dairy production” – UZ contributes to deep data analysis and coordinates with UMIL for the identification of the scenarios to be assessed from the socio-economic sustainability point of view in WP4.
• 3, “socio-economic assessment” – UZ leads the development of social and socio-economic indicators to be used in the multi-criteria assessment
• WP5, “Communication and dissemination” – UZ leads the dissemination to international bodies such as TFRN, TFEIP under the UNECE LRTAP convention or IPCC TFI in T5.5.