Completed Projects

Duration: 04/2010 - 03/2013

A novel approach for quantifying and understanding CO₂ surface fluxes is proposed with CARBONES. It is a global information system that will address in a comprehensive and accurate way the quantification and understanding of the distribution of CO₂ fluxes, carbon pools and underlying processes. It will take advantage of (and further adapt) in situ data infrastructures (ICOS, FLUXNET, CO₂ networks, biomass and soil inventories) as well as space-based information of land and ocean surface biophysical properties and atmospheric composition.

Contact: Matthias Forkel, Markus Reichstein more

Duration: 02/2017 - 01/2020

The objective of the priority Program 1685 is to investigate the relevance of the ecological paradigm of the ‘whole being more than the sum of its parts’ for P - nutrition of forest ecosystems. Therefore new concepts of ecosystem nutrition and new methods will be developed. We will investigate if there are any adaption mechanism of forest ecosystems to sites with poor P supply, which are not a result of the adaptation of single organisms but of ecological interactions, which enable coordinated nutrient (re-) mobilisation, uptake, usage and storage.

Contact: Marion Schrumpf, Sönke Zaehle

Duration: 09/2008 - 02/2013

This COST Action ES0804 provides a strong and dedicated coordination platform for planning, analysis and synthesis efforts, which will actually establish the building blocks of a European next generation of comprehensive multi-species flux monitoring sites. The COST Action will also create standardised methods and protocols for selection of site location, flux measurement techniques, (automated) processing and storage of data. This with a view to stimulate wider use of the data by a more diverse community of researchers, operational forecasters and environmental assessment organisations, policy and public.

Contact: Markus Reichstein more

Duration: 11/2018 - 10/2019

In this project, we'll work on creating a multi-decadal record of biomass estimates from multiple Earth Observation datasets and investigate the integration of these new remote sensing data streams into an analysis of ecosystem dynamics and modelling

Contact: Nuno Carvalhais

Duration: 01/2004 - 12/2008

To advance our understanding in a multidisciplinary and integrated way, 61 research centres from 17 European countries have joined forces for a 5-year EU-funded research project started in January 2004. CarboEurope-IP addresses basic scientific questions of high political relevance.

Contact: Ernst-Detlef Schulze, Martin Heimann, Christoph Gerbig, Martin Jun, Miguel Mahecha, Markus Reichstein, Sönke Zaehle more

Duration: 07/2013 - 12/2015

FACE-MPI2 is an international effort to use observations from free-air CO₂ enrichment experiments to better understand the validity of assumptions commonly used in ecosystem models.

Contact: Sönke Zaehle, Kristina Luis

Duration: 10/2013 - 09/2016
Contact: Martin Heimann, Mathias Goeckede, Markus Reichstein more

Duration: 10/2010 - 09/2014

ClimAfrica is conceived to respond to the urgent international need for the most appropriate and up-to-date tools to better understand and predict climate change, assess its impact on African ecosystems and population, and develop the correct adaptation strategies.

Contact: Martin Jung, Markus Reichstein, Eric Thomas, Ulrich Weber

Duration: 04/2007 - 03/2011

CIRCE aims at developing for the first time an assessment of the climate change impacts in the Mediterranean area. The objectives of the project are: - to predict and to quantify physical impacts of climate change in the Mediterranean area; - to evaluate the consequences of climate change for the society and the economy of the populations located in the Mediterranean area; - to develop an integrated approach to understand combined effects of climate change; - to identify adaptation and mitigation strategies in collaboration with regional stakeholders.

Contact: Markus Reichstein, Dorothea Frank, Enrico Tomelleri more

Duration: 10/2017 - 12/2020

The CO₂ Human Emissions project is a European effort to develop a monitoring system for global anthropogenic CO₂ emissions as opposed to variability in atmospheric CO₂ concentrations that is caused by natural processes in order to enable well-informed decision making for greenhouse gas emission reductions, and to monitor policy effectiveness. It combines space-borne observations, ground-based measurements and Earth system models with national emission inventory data.

Contact: Julia Marshall, Martin Jung more

Duration: 11/2015 - 03/2021

The CRESCENDO project aims to facilitate a coordinated European contribution to the CMIP6 experiment where the climate change community compares different international climate models to improve our knowledge of the Earth’s climate processes and provide the best possible future climate projections to governments and decision-makers Earth system models are increasingly the primary tools used for estimating the full Earth system response to future emissions of greenhouse gases.

Contact: Sönke Zaehle more

Duration: 11/2017 - 02/2021

The project aims to strengthen the coordination and synergies in European and global research on SOC sequestration in agricultural soils, leading to an improved understanding and scientific basis to target ambitious practices required to preserve and enhance SOC. We are involved in identifying knowledge gaps about agricultural management options to improve carbon sequestration and its co-benefits for food production and soil health.

Contact: Marion Schrumpf more

Duration: 10/2019 - 09/2022
PI/Co-PIs: Tarek El-Madany

The project aim at constraining the estimates of gross primary productivity (GPP), and ecosystem respiration (ER). To this end we propose a combined approach including joint measurements of carbon dioxide and carbonyl sulfide fluxes and sun-induced fluorescence during two field campaigns in two contrasting ecosystems, a mesocosm experiment, and process-based simulation modelling making use of the experimental data. The project is in collaboration with the University of Innsbruck.

Participating department members: Tarek El-Madany

Duration: 02/2015 - 01/2017
Contact: Miguel Mahecha, Fabian Gans more

Duration: 01/2015 - 05/2017
Contact: Nuno Carvalhais more

Duration: 05/2009 - 10/2013

The European integrating project COMBINE brings together research groups to advance Earth system models (ESMs) for more accurate climate projections and for reduced uncertainty in the prediction of climate and climate change in the next decades. COMBINE will contribute to better assessments of changes in the physical climate system and of their impacts in the societal and economic system.

Contact: Christian Beer, Martin Jung, Markus Reichstein, Sönke Zaehle

Duration: 11/2011 - 10/2015

PAGE21 is a Large-scale integrating collaborative project under the ENV call topic "Vulnerability of Arctic permafrost to climate change and implications for global GHG emissions and future climate" (ENV.2011.1.1.3-1) PAGE21 will aim to understand and quantify the vulnerability of permafrost environments to a changing global climate, and to investigate the feedback mechanisms associated with increasing greenhouse gas emissions from permafrost zones.

Contact: Christian Beer, Mathias Goeckede, Martin Heimann , Sonja Kaiser more

Duration: 01/2021 - 12/2023
PI/Co-PIs: Nuno Carvalhais

DeepCube is a research project that aims to explore and develop new deep learning approaches to address relevant Earth system dynamics related to localized impacts of extreme events (drought and heat waves) and ecosystem disturbances (wildfires), including impacts of climate variability on migration flows, through AI-based understanding, quantification and prediction.

Participating department members: Nuno Carvalhais, Fabian Gans and Markus Reichstein, Christian Requeña-Mesa, Dushyant Kumar, Lazaro Alonso, Claire Robin, Vitus Benson and Melanie Weynants more

Duration: 10/2017 - 09/2019

Climate extremes are one of the major future threats to society, as recognized by several international bodies. Yet, it is difficult to conceive the question: “Which instabilities, tipping points and risk cascades are most likely emerging from the interaction of future climate extremes with ecological and societal systems?” There is lack of systematic assessment which modelling approaches and data from various disciplines can be used to better constrain this question.

Contact: Markus Reichstein more

Duration: 01/2022 - 12/2023
PI/Co-PIs: Basil Kraft, Martin Jung, Markus Reichstein

The combination of deep learning and physically-based approaches into so-called hybrid models has the potential to improve the predictability and understandability of the Earth system. Hybrid models are partially interpretable and physically consistent, yet they are highly adaptive to data. Given the growing amounts of Earth observation data, such approaches are worthwhile exploring to provide a complementary, data-driven perspective.

Participating department members: Basil Kraft, Martin Jung, Markus Reichstein, Zavud Baghirov more

Duration: 04/2015 - 03/2019
Contact: Miguel Mahecha, Markus Reichstein more

Duration: 05/2019 - 04/2023
PI/Co-PIs: Markus Reichstein, Martin Jung

E-SHAPE aims to develop operational Earth Observation (EO) services with and for the users and to create a conducive environment whereby the strengths of Europe are exploited towards addressing societal challenges, fostering entrepreneurship and supporting sustainable development.

Participating department members: Markus Reichstein, Martin Jung, Jacob A. Nelson more

Duration: 04/2018 - 09/2019

The Earth System Data Lab (ESDL) is a multi-variate data set of essential Earth System variables on a common grid and sharing a common data model. The main objective of the ESDL activity is to establish and operate a service to the scientific community that greatly facilitates access and exploitation of the multivariate data set in the ESDL and by this means advances the understanding of the interactions between the ocean-land-atmosphere system and society.

Contact: Miguel Mahecha more

Duration: 01/2006 - 01/2013

This is a joint research project of MPI for Biogeochemsitry, MPI for Meteorology, MPI for Chemistry, and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research to bridge the current gap between the traditional modelling of physical-chemical components of the Earth system and the modelling of the biosphere. TBM contributes to the workpackages on data assimilation and carbon-nitrogen cycling.

Contact: Daniela Dalmonech, Martin Heimann, Christoph Köstler, Gregor Schürmann, Sönke Zaehle more

Duration: 11/2010 - 2/2016

The EU project EMBRACE aims to improve the proven European Earth system models in order to enable, among other things, reliable statements about expected extreme events such as droughts, floods and heat waves.

Contact: Nuno Carvalhais, Martin Jung, Markus Reichstein, Sönke Zaehle more

Duration: 10/2011 - 09/2015

ÉCLAIRE seeks to quantify the effects of climate change on air pollution impacts and use this to develop response strategies for European ecosystems. Focussing especially on the role of ozone and nitrogen, and where relevant their interactions with volatile organic compounds, the main objectives of Eclaire are to provide a robust understanding of the air pollution impacts on European land ecosystems under changing environmental conditions, and to provide reliable and innovative risk assessment methodologies to support EU policy. BGI is mainly involved in developing modelling schemes to account for ozone impacts on vegetation and feedback to the terrestrial carbon-nitrogen cycles.

Contact: Martina Franz, Sönke Zaehle more

Duration: 01/2019 - 12/2021

Climate extremes are a top threat to human well-being and sustainable development Extreme events such as droughts, heatwaves, heavy rain, and violent storms are now part of our daily news. Risk-aware development towards the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals can significantly reduce societal risks associated with climate extremes.

Contact: Markus Reichstein; Dorothea Frank more

Duration: 10/2014 - 09/2016
Contact: Markus Reichstein, Dorothea Frank more

Duration: 09/2012 - 05/2014

WACMOS-II aims to advance towards the development of evapotranspiration (ET) estimates at global and regional scales, having as main objectives to develop a Reference Input Data Set to derive and validate ET estimates, and to perform a cross-comparison, error characterization, and validation exercise of a group of selected ET algorithms driven by the Reference Input Data Set.

Contact: Martin Jung, Markus Reichstein more

Duration: 12/2018 - 11/2019

The FLEX-Sense 2018 envisaged campaign activities focus on collecting relevant airborne data over representative monitoring sites, concurrent with ground-based measurements and in coordination with the spaceborne mission Sentinel 3-B. (ESA, subcontract with research centre Jülich)

Contact: Mirco Migliavacca

Duration: 11/2013 - 01/2015

The central mission of the iDiv is to promote theory-driven synthesis and experiments and data-driven theory in biodiversity sciences, and provide the scientific foundation for a sustainable management of the earth’s biodiversity.

Contact: Jens Kattge, Miguel Mahecha, Markus Reichstein, Sue Trumbore, Franziska Schrodt more

Duration: 01/2010 - 09/2013
Contact: Martin Heimann, Christoph Gerbig, Jošt Valentin Lavric, Antje Moffat, Markus Reichstein, Enrico Tomelleri, Sönke Zaehle

Duration: 06/2022 - 09/2023
Funding: Volkswagen Stiftung, DFG Leibniz Preis
PI/Co-Pls: Markus Reichstein, Dorothea Frank

Climate change related systemic risks have the potential to be an even greater threat than those of the COVID-19 pandemic. Are we prepared for this? Join the Herrenhausen Conference in Hanover on June 21 - 23, 2023.

Participating department members: Stefanie Johnson more

Duration: 04/2008 - 03/2013

ICOS is a new European Research Infrastructure for providing the long-term observations required to understand the present state and predict future behavior of the global carbon cycle and greenhouse gas emissions and for monitoring the effectiveness of carbon sequestration and/or greenhouse gases emission reduction activities on global atmospheric composition levels, including attribution of sources and sinks by region and sector. Our main role is to contribute to an assessment and optimization of the representativeness and usefulness of the European eddy covariance flux network for the goals of ICOS.

Contact: Christoph Gerbig, Markus Reichstein

Duration: 11/2018 - 05/2021

Land Surface Temperature (LST) is an important variable within the Earth climate system. It describes processes such as the exchange of energy and water between the land surface and atmosphere, and influences the rate and timing of plant growth. The LST_cci aims to provide an accurate view of temperatures across land surfaces globally over the past 20 to 25 years and meet the requirements of Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) for climate applications by developing techniques to merge archived data from a variety of satellites into a combined long-term satellite record for climate.

Contact: Markus Reichstein more

Duration: 10/2020 - 03/2023
PI/Co-PIs: Sönke Zaehle, Tarek El-Madany

Investigate the terrestrial biosphere’s net ecosystem exchange – photosynthetic CO₂ uptake minus respiratory CO₂ release – response to climatic drivers by means of combining a process-based model with a wide range of observations (in-situ and remotely sensed) on local and regional scale. In the project we are involved in the modelling part and in the field activity.

Participating department members: Sönke Zaehle, Tarek El-Madany more

Duration: 06/2017 - 05/2019
Contact: Richard Nair, Mirco Migliavacca, Markus Reichstein more

Duration: 01/2017 - 12/2019

MoReDEHESHyReS methodology will be tested using hyperspectral ground and airborne data acquired in a Mediterranean tree-grass ecosystem located in Majadas del Tiétar, Cáceres, Spain. In this site, a complete set of replicated Eddy covariance ecosystem and subcanopy towers support a large scale fertilization experiment (MANIP). Spectral data were acquired from ground (SMANIE) and airborne (DEHESHyRe, FLUXPEC) platforms simultaneously to surface fluxes.

Contact: Mirco Migliavacca more

Duration: 04/2018 - 12/2019

The project addresses the effect of soil moisture on carbon dynamics in boreal forest soils. It will improve our understanding of this key process and generate new data on soil C stocks and moisture conditions. The new data and knowledge will be used to improve the models. We will run the improved models to estimate soil C amounts for whole landscapes. We expect this work to decrease the uncertainty in the prediction of global soil C dynamics, which is a relevant issue for the international research community.

Contact: Bernhard Ahrens, Markus Reichstein more

Duration: 01/2015 - 04/2016

DEHESHyrE proposes joint modeling of water, carbon and nutrient cycling by means of ground measurements, airborne and satellite systems, which involves combination of data at various spatial and temporal scales.

Contact: Mirco Migliavacca more

Duration: 02/2018 - 01/2021

Land surface hydrology acts at the interface between soil, vegetation, and atmosphere, and therefore impacts food production, water availability, and extreme events such as droughts and floods. The question whether or not land surface impacts on vegetation and near-surface weather are intensifying in the context of global warming is tackled by a multivariate approach and an integrated analysis of soil moisture, matric potential, gross primary production, evapotranspiration, temperature, and ancillary land surface data. Land-atmosphere interactions with respect to its short- and long-term variability, its potential changes with climate change, and identify past, present and future hot spot regions of land-climate feedbacks will be investigated.

Contact: Rene Orth

Duration: 01/2018 - 12/2021

Activities in VERIFY are targeted towards developing a pre-operational system to quantify greenhouse gas emissions (CO₂, CH₄, N₂O) across the EU based on independent observations in support of inventories that rely only on statistical data.

Contact: Martin Jung, Christoph Gerbig more

Duration: 01/2017 - 12/2018

The project will provide complementarily support our collaborative research/training and networking activities and field work in the context of the projects SynerTGE, MANIP and TRUSTEE.

Contact: Mirco Migliavacca

Duration: 02/2010 - 01/2013
Contact: Martin Heimann, Markus Reichstein more

Duration: 01/2021 - 12/2023
PI/Co-PIs: Martin Jung

CoCO2 is a European project lead by ECMWF to build a monitoring and verification support capability for global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) related to human activities.

Participating department members: Martin Jung more

Duration: 09/2008 - 02/2014

The general aim of the QUASOM project is to improve our understanding of the key interactions between the biological and the physicochemical soil systems. These are often not explicitly considered in current experimental and modeling approaches and are likely to influence the biogeochemical cycles for a large part of the terrestrial biosphere and thus have the potential to significantly impact the Earth System as a whole. This will be achieved through an approach that integrates new soil mesocosm experiments, field data from ongoing European projects, and soil process modeling. An incorporation of a new soil module into a global dynamic vegetation model (DGVM) is foreseen.

Contact: Bernhard Ahrens, Maarten Braakhekke, Lenka Forkelova, Gerd Gleixner, Myroslava Khomik, Markus Reichstein, Marion Schrumpf, Stefany Thiessen, Enrico Weber, Thomas Wutzler

Duration: 10/2006 - 03/2010
Contact: Markus Reichstein, Werner Kutsch more

Duration: 09/2015 - 08/2021

The objective of QUINCY is to clarify the role of the interacting terrestrial nitrogen and phosphorus cycles and their effects on terrestrial C allocation and residence times as well as terrestrial water fluxes

Contact: Sönke Zaehle more

Duration: 07/2020 - 01/2022

The second phase of ESA-CCI RECCAP2 aims at improving the consistency between estimates of total greenhouse budgets produced by top-down and bottom-up methods against official estimates of national anthropogenic emissions and land sinks reported by individual countries to the UNFCCC as national communications.

Contact: Ana Bastos more

Sentinel missions for Terrestrial Carbon Production
Duration: 06/2021 - 06/2023
PI/Co-PIs: Martin Jung, Gregory Duveiller

The objective of the Sen4GPP project is to improve our knowledge on the spatio-temporal variations of GPP associated with terrestrial ecosystems by a synergistic exploitation of the complementary information (Land Surface Temperature – LST, Solar-Induced Fluorescence – SIF, Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation – FAPAR and land cover) provided by the Sentinel missions (Sentinel-2, Sentinel-3 and Sentinel-5P) at multiple spatial and temporal resolutions, as well as other Earth Observation and in situ data.

We have been working closely with GDM in building Strategies to Integrate Data and Biogeochemical models in Development (SINDBAD), a modular framework for model-data-integration. Currently, SINDBAD supports several projects on water-carbon coupling and vegetation dynamics across scales: Graph by Sujan and Martin Jung (GDM), and the PhD projects of Tina, Hoontaek and Siyuan.

Duration: 11/2009 - 05/2013

The main objective of this Cost Action ES0903 is to develop common protocols and new instruments within a larger European network for optical measurements, bringing together scientists and industries in order to increase the reliability, value and cost-efficiency of the existing spectral observations within the European flux network.

Contact: Enrico Tomelleri more

Duration: 01/2013 - 12/2015
Contact: Markus Reichstein

Duration: 05/2009 - 05/2013

SIBAE is an integrative, coordinated European platform for the use of stable isotopes in biosphere-atmosphere-Earth system studies

Contact: Christian Beer more

Duration: 08/2012 - 08/2015

The new generation of land carbon-nitrogen-cycle models show that nitrogen feedbacks attenuate the responses of the carbon cycle to perturbations, thereby affecting long-term projections of climate change. However, the magnitude of this effect is very different between the models, leading to considerable uncertainty in projected rates of climate change.

Contact: Sönke Zaehle, Johannes Meyerholt

Duration: 08/2011 - 05/2013

Due to its climatic importance as well as high industrial development rates caused by the region´s precious natural resources (gas, oil, lumber, gold, minerals, diamonds), central Siberia and namely the Krasnoyarsk region was and is in the focus of European, Russian and global research projects starting twenty years ago (namely the IGBP Boreal Transect Study).

Contact: Christian Beer, Martin Thurner, Sonja Kaiser more

Duration: 12/2017 - 12/2021

The project aims at understanding the mechanisms of soil organic carbon storage and turnover in subsoils, and how they are influenced by physical, chemical and biological factors. Our task is developing a mechanistic soil carbon profile model representing and synthesizing these mechanisms, including vertical transport of particulate and dissolved organic carbon along the soil profile and considering both, rhizosphere and bulk soils.

Contact: Markus Reichstein, Marion Schrumpf

Duration: 01/2015 - 12/2017
Contact: Nuno Carvalhais, Markus Reichstein more

Duration: 01/2020 - 06/2022
PI/Co-PIs: Javier Pacheco-Labrador

The influence of Biodiversity on Ecosystem Functioning (BEF) has been investigated for decades using long-term experiments and ground observations. Today, novel remote sensing (RS) approaches are about to revolutionize research into BEF: Higher spectral resolutions now allow quantifying biodiversity patterns; unprecedented spatiotemporal resolutions advance analyzing ecosystem functioning. However, assessing BEF using RS data still remains a challenge.

Participating department members: Javier Pacheco-Labrador more

Duration: 06/2009 - 05/2013

CARBO-Extreme aims to * improve our understanding of the terrestrial carbon cycle in response to climate variability and extreme events * represent and apply this knowledge over Europe with predictive terrestrial carbon cycle modelling * interpret the model predictions in terms of vulnerability of the terrestrial - in particular soil - carbon pools under different scenarios and give advice to the European Commission and other stakeholders to support the development and implementation of climate, soil and ecosystem protection policies.

Contact: Christian Beer, Nuno Carvalhais, Dorothea Frank, Miguel Mahecha, Markus Reichstein, Xiuchen Wu, Jakob Zscheischler
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Duration: 01/2009 - 12/2014

The main objective of the Cost Action ES0805 is a cross-disciplinary assessment of our current understanding of the terrestrial biosphere from an Earth system perspective to improve the reliability of future Earth system projections in coupled climate-biosphere simulations. This Action is a cross-community initiative to join efforts for improving the reliability of future combined climate-biosphere projections by accounting for recent progress in understanding, modelling and quantification of biospheric processes in the Earth system.

Contact: Sönke Zaehle more

Duration: 12/2013 - 06/2017
Contact: Gerd Gleixner, Markus Reichstein, Susan Trumbore more

Duration: 10/2011 - 09/2014

GEOCARBON aims at designing a coordinated Global Carbon Observation and Analysis System, addressing the climate targets of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) toward building a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) for carbon.

Contact: Nuno Carvalhais, Christoph Gerbig, Martin Heimann, Martin Jung, Christoph Köstler, Manos Kalomenopoulos, Miguel Mahecha, Markus Reichstein, Gregor Schürmann, Sönke Zaehle more

Duration: 10/2016 - 09/2020

TRuStEE aims to capacitate the next generation of scientists to understand and deal with the increasing pressure of environmental change on ecosystem functioning and land-atmosphere interactions.

Contact: Mirco Migliavacca more