Research aims
The primary concern of the Institute of Soil Ecology is the conservation and evaluation of soil in its role as the support for plants and as a significant landscape feature. Soils serve, as a reactor for the conversion of nutrients and the breakdown of pollutants, as a water filter, and as valuable indicators in the evaluation of anthropogenic sources of pollution. Such sources of pollution can be not only the result of land use itself, but also be the result of contributions of pollutants from other compartments of the environment. Our work focuses on:
- Living organisms in the soil and the preservation of their diversity in conjunction with the site specific conditions
- The soil controlled processes which convert substances. The products may have negative impacts on the other compartments of the environment (the release of trace gases into the environment which can impact climate and the pollution of water sheets with nitrates and pesticides)
- Interactions between living organisms in the soil and the physico-chemical habitat soil and its stability
- Interactions between soil and plants and rhizosphere organisms within particular micro-organism communities
Vegetation and soil microflora are active components and potential indicators of soil quality. The research groups investigate, alongside the process of conversion of nutrients and the behaviour of pollutants, particularly the structure and activity of soil microflora, using modern molecular biology, serology, and isotope-marking methods. The cytology, physiology and biophysics of plants with respect to their interaction with soil are - along with their qualities in terms of yield and fitness - investigated by means of various environmental simulation methods (i.e. exposure chambers, solar simulator, lysimeters operating with the gas treatment of the plant cover (free air enhancement) and/or with subsurface - heating, microcosms for the incubation of soil or soil-plant systems, FACE (free air carbon enhancement), a research greenhouse, etc.).
The modelling of soil processes serves to provide an understanding of the complex system of interactions occurring in the soil and to predict the degree of resistance of terrestrial ecosystems.