We investigate and teach the interactions between society, soils, water, vegetation and climate. Without an understanding of this interplay, a sustainable approach to our environment is impossible.

 

Notices

Zeitgerechtigkeit
„Herstellung von Zeitgerechtigkeit ist Aufgabe des Sozialstaates“

Wie Geld- sind auch Zeitbudgets extrem ungerecht verteilt, das ist die Kernbotschaft der Mobilitäts- und Bildungsforscherin Caroline Kramer im KIT-Interview. Für sie gehört zur nachhaltigen Stadt- und Verkehrsplanung, dass auch für Wenigerverdienende so etwas wie Zeitautonomie möglich wird

Zum Interview
T. Walker am KITMarkus Breik, KIT
Visit from the Minister of the Environment Thekla Walker

The Minister of the Environment Thekla Walker informed herself about a research project of the IfGG Aueninstitut in the Rastatter Bruch conservation area. Project manager Dr. Christian Damm presented the investigations on the water balance of the lowland moor endangered by desiccation and on options for the use of urban rainwater runoff for rewetting.

Link_more
Hailuogou Gletscher
Fast forest succession after glacial retreat

A blog of the Soil Science Society of America reports results of the study of Nuria Basdediós and Wolfgang Wilcke of the IFGG with Chinese partners about the role of mineral weathering for forest succession in a glacial retreat area in the Gongga Mountains.

More
SpacEconomics
Netzwerke der deutschen Musikindustrie im SpacEconomics Podcast

In dieser Folge des preisgekrönten SpacEconomics Geographie-Blogs der Universität Jena diskutieren Kai Marquardt und Christoph Mager über die deutsche Musikindustrie und ihre Produktionsnetzwerke. Es geht unter anderem um die Dynamik von Standorten und Standortkonzentrationen und die anhaltende Bedeutung lokaler Ökosysteme der Produktion.

Zum Blogbeitrag
Becycles NatureJörg Hailer
Biodiversity at the landscape scale enhances local ecosystem services

A new publication of the Biodiversity Exploratories (www.biodiversity-exploratories.de) including Sophia Leimer and Wolfgang Wilcke of the IFGG in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution shows that a high surrounding biodiversity reduces the risk of local species loss and enables contributions of mobile species.

More
Christopher
GBIF Young Researcher Award

Christopher Schiller received the GBIF Young Researcher Award 2022 for his master's thesis in geoecology published in Nature Scientific Reports. He is the first German to receive the prize, which has been awarded since 2010. GBIF is the most important data infrastructure for biodiversity and at the same time a research network.

More
Esthela GonzalezCarlos Valarezo
Afforestation experiment in Amazonia

Esthela González from Ecuador has submitted her doctoral thesis about an afforestation experiment in Amazonia. Now, one of her original publications has been highlighted in the news of the Soil Science Society of America.

More
Fabian Fassnacht
F. Faßnacht appointed to FU Berlin

Fabian Faßnacht from the vegetation research group was appointed to the Freie Universität Berlin, where he holds the professorship for remote sensing and geoinformatics at the Institute of Geographical Sciences.

Gabi Zachmann, KITFoto: Gabi Zachmann, KIT
Leibniz Prize for A. Arneth

Almut Arneth receives Germany's most important research award, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, for her research on ecosystems under the influence of global environmental change. A. Arneth heads the Department of Ecosystem-Atmosphere Interactions at Campus Alpin (IMK-IFU) and she is a professor at the Institute of Geography and Geoecology.

More
Erwin Project
How do forests burn?

A film team from SWR accompanied us during work on the project ErWiN: SWR Wissen: How do forests burn? The aim is to better understand the dynamics of forest fires and to reduce the risk of forest fires. Aim is to better understand the dynamics of forest fires and to reducing the risk. Projects website.

Video
Pastures unfertilisedJörg Hailer
Biodiversity closes the phosphorus cycle

In a publication in the renowned journal Nature Communications Sophia Leimer and Wolfgang Wilcke from IFGG together with Yvonne Oelmann from the University of Tübingen and the consortia of two large German biodiversity experiments were able to show that in agricultural grassland ecosystems both the above- and belowground biodiversity contribute to optimally use the available phosphorus - an important plant nutrient element and a scarce ressource as mineral fertiliser.

More
Rio NegroChristian Damm
Rio Negro

During a two-week excursion over 30 students from both the KIT (Germany) and INPA (Brazil) installed permanent forest inventories on the Rio Negro, a large tributary of the Amazon River. We subsequently merged resulting inventory data with historical hydrological data to model the flooding distribution of 111 tree species.

More
VjosaStefan Schmutz
Vjosa

This baseline survey summarises the value of the Vjosa River system as one of the few remaining reference sites for dynamic floodplains in Europe on the one hand, and reveals the detrimental effects dams could have on the river system on the other: Only one dam will significantly destroy the ecological continuum of a pristine river.

More
Exploratorien
New tool to recognize ecosystem change

In a new publication in the renowned journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS), the consortium of the German Biodiversity Exploratories with the participation of Sophia Leimer and Wolfgang Wilcke of the IFGG show that increasing land-use intensity in grassland and forest changes the relationship between biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and the resulting ecosystem services, which are important for humans. With the proposed method which is based on network theory, a novel tool becomes available with which the entire complexity of the anthropogenically caused ecosystem changes can be recognized.

More