The Professorship's Research

Project start: 01.02.2019
Project end: 31.01.2022
Sponsor: Hessen State Ministry of Higher Education, Research and the Arts

Project start: 01.01.2015
Project end: 31.10.2018
Sponsor: Federal Ministry of Education and Research, European Commission

A key role for a resource-saving, sustainable land use management of agricultural ecosystems are the interactions between biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. The PromESSinG project aims to identify management options for promoting biodiversity in order to reduce external inputs in vineyards ecosystems. It will be conducted from 2015 to 2018 in five countries of Central Europe : Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, and Romania. The project intends to unravel biodiversity driven processes associated with the main ecosystem services in viticultural systems taking different management factors into account. A particular focus will be on the analysis of interactions between soil management strategies and soil biodiversity, as interactions between the diverse soil biota as well as chemical and physical properties of the soil environment are fundamental for the provision of soil-based ecosystem services. The intended research will be conducted in temperate vineyard systems in France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Romania, thus covering a gradient from maritime to continental climates. In a common study with all countries involved and using a standardized sampling design we will analyze the links between disturbance gradients and diversity of soil relevant species groups (soil microflora including mycorrhiza, macrofauna, plants), soil function and related supporting, regulating and provisioning ESS. Management effects on these interactions are analyzed on two different scales by combining: a) the factor soil management (local scale) including three vineyard ground management treatments of different disturbance intensities, b) the factor landscape management (landscape scale) consisting of three different landscape heterogeneity levels.

Project start: 01.12.2008
Project end: 31.01.2015
Sponsor: German Research Foundation

Project start: 31.01.2012
Project end: 31.12.2014
Sponsor: German Research Foundation