Projects

The loss of biodiversity - defined as habitat diversity, species diversity and genetic diversity - has been progressing steadily and rapidly since the beginning of the Anthropocene. The extent and speed of species loss clearly exceeds natural extinction rates, and the negative impact of human activities on habitats, species and genetic diversity is now undisputed. With the loss of biodiversity, not only are individual species irretrievably lost, but ecosystem functions are also impaired. These form the basis for all goods and services provided by ecosystems.

The coming years will be critical for biodiversity conservation, both to avert a tipping point of biodiversity loss and to achieve lasting and systemic change in public awareness. Biodiversity conservation needs societal acceptance and commitment, as well as science-based policy decisions. Existing knowledge about the impacts of human activities on biodiversity and ecological processes needs to be made available to decision-makers and translated into recommendations for action. However, the biodiversity crisis is not a clearly delineated issue, but is closely linked to other global crises and challenges (especially the climate crisis, but also food supply, pandemics, social justice). Changes in the use of natural habitats and legal regulations to protect biodiversity must therefore be scientifically monitored and evaluated for their success. This makes ecological research and especially applied biodiversity research at the same time very topical and relevant for the future.

Project lead

Nico Blüthgen, TU Darmstadt

E-Mail: bluethgen@bio.tu-darmstadt.de

Project duration: 2020-2024

Description

The project BioDivKultur, in which biologists work together with humanities, is dedicated to evaluate attitudes, utilization interests, options for action and regulatory possibilities in the design and maintenance of green spaces. The aim is to investigate and test how biodiversity as a value and as an interest in use can be communicated more effectively and how it is integrated in political and practical considerations in the design of green spaces (understood as the establishment of multi-layered "biodiversity cultures"). The specific biological focus is on options for better insect protection in open green spaces of cities, businesses and agriculture, especially related to mowing.

Tasks of the junior professorship in the project

Nadja Simons is co-applicant of the project and supports the biology subproject.

Project lead

Nadja Simons

E-Mail: nadja.simons@uni-wuerzburg.de

Duration: 2023-2026

Description

Walddiskurs is a project within the framework of the BMEL's "Sustainable Forest Conservation" funding program. In this interdisciplinary project Nadja Simons is leading the subproject "Forest ecosystem - analysis and modeling of potential conflicts between CO2 storage and biodiversity protection through forest management". The main research topics are the description, analysis and modeling of trade-offs and synergies between climate and biodiversity protection in managed forests. For this purpose, statistical models will be developed and applied to different scenarios, and empirical studies on the relationship between wood mass and biodiversity will be conducted. In the joint project, there is close cooperation with collaborators from the fields of political science and linguistics in order to record discourses and management practices in state forests and to develop recommendations for action in practice.

Project lead

Nadja Simons

E-Mail: nadja.simons@uni-wuerzburg.de

Duration: since 2024

Description

UrbanPArt – Phenology of Arthropod communities in Urban green spaces

The project UrbanPArt uses a transdisciplinary approach to investigate the importance of urban green spaces for biodiversity using the example of arthropods. The ecological focus is on the phenology of urban arthropod communities and the influence of green space management. Simultaneously, the importance of semi-natural grasslands at the edge of residential areas and the connectivity between green spaces for insects and spiders will be investigated. Existing management approaches will be evaluated regarding their effectiveness for insect conservation.

Previous Project Collaborations

Contact

Juliane Röder, Uni Marburg

E-Mail: info@bioholz-projekt.de

Duration: 2015-2021

Description

The BioHolz-Projekt involves research and development work to promote biodiversity and optimize ecosystem services in forests. Scientific investigations and practical testing go hand in hand. Researchers from a variety of disciplines are collaborating with forestry and conservation representatives to determine which measures can be effective for which elements of biodiversity, what impacts on ecosystem services they can have, and how to evaluate these measures from the perspective of forest managers and land use planners. The overall goal is to develop practical approaches that can be taken up in different forestry operations to promote biodiversity and ecosystem services in forests nationwide.

In the BioHolz project, special attention is given to the role of dead and decaying wood which is scarce in conventionally managed forests compared to natural forests or forests that have been unmanaged for long periods of time. Active enrichment of forest stands with dead wood may be appropriate for supporting the goals of the national Biodiversity Strategy, but forest managers have to be motivated to adopt such measures. Opportunity costs of the measures must be acknowledged, and their economic feasibility needs to be ensured in those cases where the income of forest managers depends on the production of timber.

As part of the BioHolz-Project, several subprojects address different aspects of dead wood in forests. The project encompasses ecological, sociological and economic approaches to scientific analyses of biodiversity and ecosystem services. The research activities are closely linked to applied topics which are relevant for the management of forests.

Nadja Simons has been involved in the project as a post-doc researcher in the subproject "Scenario-based modelling of trends in the provision of ecosystem services":

One main research outcome has been the modelling of ecosystem service potential across different forest types:

Taking advantage of data from the research platform Biodiversity Exploratories, ecosystem processes are linked to forest structural parameters via ‘production functions’. Those functions are then used to extrapolate ecosystem processes to plots of the German National Forest Inventory. This extrapolation provides a description of the current situation of ecosystem processes for any forested geographic area within Germany.
Using forest characteristics which are assessed during the German National Forest Inventory, the forests in Bavaria were assigned to eight forest types based on a clustering method. The selection of characteristics used for the clustering were discussed and defined together with forestry experts and stakeholders through a Delphi-study.
In the same Delphi-study, experts and stakeholders were asked to create scenarios of future forest use and changes in influencing factors. In a second step, the experts and stakeholders translated those scenarios into probabilities of change from one forest type to another. Those probabilities of change are translated into maps of future forest type distribution within each of the developed scenarios with the help of the InVEST Scenario Generator.
Following the previous steps, the current level of ecosystem processes and information on the forest type is available for each National Forest Inventory point. With this link, the average and variation of ecosystem processes can be calculated for each of the eight forest types. Based on the change in forest type distribution within each of the scenarios, possible future distribution of the ecosystem processes can be modelled.

The results of the first step have been published in Forest Ecosystems: N.K. Simons, M.R. Felipe-Lucia, P. Schall, C. Ammer, J. Bauhus, N. Blüthgen, S. Boch, F. Buscot, M. Fischer, K. Goldmann, M.M. Gossner, F. Hänsel, K. Jung, P. Manning, T. Nauss, Y. Oelmann, R. Pena, A. Polle, S.C. Renner, M. Schloter, I. Schöning, E.-D. Schulze, E.F. Solly, E. Sorkau, B. Stempfhuber, T. Wubet, J. Müller, S. Seibold, W.W. Weisser (2021): National Forest Inventories capture the multifunctionality of managed forests in Germany. Forest Ecosystems 8(5). doi:10.1186/s40663-021-00280-5 Link

The results of the following steps have been presented at the yearly conference of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (LINK TO NEWS) and are currentyl prepared for submission with People and Nature.

In addition to the ecosystem processes measured in the Biodiversity Exploratories, ecosystem functions related to aboveground and belowground animal activity were measured within one of the deadwood experiments: seed removal, predation of caterpillars, activity of belowground micro-arthropods and litter decomposition. Those processes have been analyzed together with assessments of scenic beauty and costs of deadwood enrichment to investigate potential trade-offs between different supporting, provisioning and cultural ecosystem services.

Contact

Central Coordination Office (BEO)

E-Mail: beo@senckenberg.de

DFG funded infrastructure Priority Programme SPP 1374

Description

The Biodiversity Exploratories address crucial questions about biodiversity change. For the first time, they combine biodiversity and ecosystem research in real landscapes with a long-term perspective. Scientists from different research disciplines from all over Germany and Europe work interdisciplinary on the common guiding questions of the Biodiversity Exploratories.

Nadja Simons has been conducting her PhD within the core-project "Arthropods" between October 2011 and Mai 2015, investigating the role of land-use intensity on arthropod (functional) diversity and community structures within the grasslands. Publications related to this work can be found here.