Ecosystem Functioning and Services
NEWS:
Professor Vicky Temperton wrote a Trends in Ecology and Evolution Spotlight highlighting research showing that higher temperatures during germination can reshape plant communities by altering seasonal priority effects and plant performance.
New paper from the Rwanda project identifies key challenges and priorities for effective restoration in western Rwanda using insights from scientists, practitioners, and policymakers.
New paper shows that removing invasive pine trees can help restore coastal plant communities by allowing below-ground root dynamics and soil processes to recover toward conditions found in non-invaded ecosystems. Check out this plain text summary: What happens belowground when invasive species are controlled?
The final report of The Grassworks research program shows what works and why in grassland restoration in Germany.
Welcome to the Ecosystem Functioning and Services Lab at Leuphana university! We develop research on plant ecology focusing on 1) acquiring a better understanding and fostering of extensively managed biodiverse systems, and 2) making intensively managed systems more sustainable. Biodiversity is a key component of a functioning, sustainable planet, yet it is being lost at a rate never seen before in the history. The main causes of biodiversity loss are land use change, invasive species and climate change. Hence, key questions of our time are:
- How can we counter current biodiversity loss, whilst also allowing for food security and adequate livelihoods and social interactions?
- What role can the restoration of biodiversity play in counteracting biodiversity loss, whilst helping to mitigate climate change and providing new forms of social and economic livelihood?
Possible solutions include a combined land sharing and land sparing approach to land use, focussing on both extensive land use as well as a sustainable intensification of cropping systems. Both biodiversity and assembly research in ecology are of key relevance to addressing such questions, since in land sharing (e.g. nature-friendly farming) we need to maintain or restore high diversity whilst ensuring adequate agricultural yield. Knowledge from biotic interaction research, as we do in our group, is essential for improving the efficiency of intensive agriculture and providing possible leverage in enabling both reasonable yields as well as biodiversity.