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A new study shows that future ecosystem functioning will increasingly depend on water availability. Using recent simulations from climate models, an international team of scientists found several “hot spot regions” where increasing water limitation strongly affects ecosystems. These include Central Europe, the Amazon, and western Russia. mehr

Microorganisms in aquifers deep below the earth’s surface produce similar amounts of biomass as those in some marine waters. This is the finding of researchers led by the Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv). The study has been published in Nature Geoscience. mehr

25 years ago, the two Max Planck Institutes for Biogeochemistry and for Chemical Ecology were founded in Jena. A few years later, they moved into their two newly constructed institute buildings on Beutenberg Campus as immediate neighbors. On June 1, 2022, they will celebrate their anniversary in a joint ceremony with renowned guests from science and politics, scientific partners, as well as former and current employees. mehr

You can't see them with the naked eye, but our forest ground is littered with microorganisms. They decompose falling leaves, thereby improving soil quality and counteracting climate change. But how do these single-celled organisms coordinate their tasks? An international research team has been looking into this little-understood process. The results of the study were recently published in Scientific Reports.

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Scientists have succeeded in detecting changes in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels much faster than before. Using a new method, they combined atmospheric measurements of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and oxygen (O₂) from the north coast of the United Kingdom. The study, with the participation of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, was published Apr. 22 in Science Advances. mehr

International researchers found a pattern of extreme climate conditions leading to forest dieback. To do this, the team had collected worldwide records of climate-related tree and forest dieback events over the past nearly five decades. The results, recently published in Nature Communications, reveal an ominous scenario for forests in the context of ongoing global warming. mehr

International forest experts analyzed major tree and forest dieback events that occurred globally in the last decades in response to climate extremes. To their surprise many forests were strongly affected that were not considered threatened based on current scientific understanding. The study, led by the MPI-BGC and published in Annual Reviews in Plant Biology, underscores also that further tree and forest dieback is likely to occur. mehr