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Schmidt, L.: Der Einfluss der Bodentemperatur auf die Erholung der Photosyntheseprozesse im Frühling bei Pinus sylvestris L. Diplom, IV, 117, VIII, A15 Bl. S., Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena (2005)
Tittmann, S.: Einfluss von Photoperiode und Temperatur auf die Photosynthese- und Kältehärtungsprozesse der Waldkiefer (Pinus sylvestris L.). Diplom, VIII, 102 S., Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena (2005)
At the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO), the research station of a joint German-Brazilian project in the Brazilian rainforest, scientists have been studying the ecosystems of the Amazon and their interactions with the atmosphere and climate for more than 10 years. Recently, representatives of the Brazilian Ministry of Research and foreign ambassadors visited the station.
Within the framework of the German-Brazilian joint project ATTO (Amazon Tall Tower Observatory) with its research station in the Brazilian rainforest, scientists for several years have gained valuable data and insights for climate and environmental research. For German partners, the Max Planck Society will continue to ensure the operation of the station and the research. In addition, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) will fund the project for another three years with around 5 million euros through ATTO+.
The successful independent research group (Max Planck Research Group) was recently extended for two more years. While a strong emphasis will remain on the evolution of early algae, the researchers are planning to increase their focus on the evolutionary role of nutrient accessibility, in particular nitrogen, and on reconstructing the evolution of the steroid biosynthetic pathway.
In this country, we take clean drinking water for granted. More than two-thirds comes from groundwater. But how secure are these essential subsurface water reservoirs in view of intensive land use, environmental pollution and climate change? Researchers are looking into this issue in the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) ‘AquaDiva’. Started in 2013, the research partnership will continue to be supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for the next four years, receiving over 9.5 million euros for the funding period to 2021.
Fine roots are a substantial but transitory carbon pool in many ecosystems and highly responsive to seasonal and environmental forcings. However they are also difficult to study, as roots are often highly spatially heterogeneous and direct sampling is very slow. Consequently, representation of roots in vegetation models is often highly simplistic. To address this knowledge gap, MPI-BGC postdoc Richard Nair had successfully applied for a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship. His project MrPARTS will be fully funded by EU for 2 years, starting in June 2017.
The Max Planck Society supports a new Partner Group between the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (MPI-BGC), Jena, Germany, and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal (IISER-B), India. The partner group‘s program aims at implementing and further developing a high-resolution inversion framework to quantify CO2 and CH4 sources and sinks that are consistent with atmospheric observations. The focus will be on the Indian subcontinent.
During the Ordovician, the geological past around 450 million years, the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere was about eightfold of the current level. So far, it has been difficult to reproduce the abrupt cooling of the climate followed by the Ordovician glaciation. A new study published in Nature Communications shows that the growing land cover by lichens and mosses led to weathering, a process absorbing carbon dioxide and subsequently reducing its atmospheric concentration.
In a second period over the next four years, the German Centre of Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig will receive funding through the German Research Foundation (DFG). Established in 2012, the center has grown to an internationally respected and leading research institution in the field of biodiversity.
Human activities like major construction and intensive farming influence soil erosion, with consequences for the food supply, water resources, and climate change. Soil carbon may be transferred to lakes and reservoirs, or escape into the atmosphere—a fact neglected by most carbon cycle models. In a new project, Dr. Jean-Philippe Jenny will integrate lake sediment data for the last century with ecosystem modeling to diagnose and predict future soil erosion dynamics and help better assess the carbon cycle on multiple scales.
Based on the excellent evaluation of our international Max Planck research school IMPRS-gBGC, the follow-up proposal to the Max Planck society was now officially granted by the Max Planck president. In his recent letter to the IMPRS spokesperson Prof. Martin Heimann, President Prof. Martin Stratmann congratulated on the highly successful research school and granted its prolongation for another six-year period.
The advance of certain algae was probably one key contribution to an almost complete glaciation of the Earth millions of years ago. The consequent rise in emissions of organic cloud-condensation nuclei led to increased cloudiness. Thereby, they likely contributed crucially to the cooling of the climate, because clouds reduce solar radiation on the Earth´s surface. This was discovered by a team of scientists in a new study to be published today in the renowned journal Nature Geoscience.
Innovative research and new techniques in the field of environmental and ecosystem sciences not only lead to new understandings, but also to a flood of data. Now it is crucial to learn to manage this ocean of data. The aim is the long term availability of data in open access for users and interested public. This is an essential precondition for subsequent re-use of the data, e.g. to study changes in plant and animal community compositions caused by climate change over decades. The better the data are accessible, the more profound are the scientific results and the resulting options of action.