Landscapes have to meet a wide variety of demands: They should provide fresh water, food and habitats, but also be functioning ecosystems with intact biodiversity. Our research aims to show ways in which multifunctional landscapes can exist in a balance of human influence and natural dynamics - despite population growth and resource hunger. To this end, we are developing field experiments, observation networks and prediction models of the latest generation.
In the face of rapid global and climatic change and its impacts, there is, among other things, an urgent need to be able to distinguish between natural mechanisms and human-induced processes. We need to understand how processes linking the geosphere, atmosphere and biosphere determine the natural dynamics of the terrestrial surface system and what the principle limits for the stability of this system are. To do this, we aim to elucidate the behaviour of the system as a whole across all timescales of climate and environmental change by combining methods from geodesy, remote sensing, geology, geomorphology, geochemistry, hydrology, ecology, (palaeo-)genetics and geomicrobiology.
The goals of our research are:
Further information Link to T5 (follows shortly)│Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung UFZ