Ecosystem Development and Global Change
The World Health Organization (WHO) states: “Continuing climate change will affect, in profoundly adverse ways, some of the most fundamental determinants of health: food, air and water,….” Thus, we want to contribute to this challenge in terms of producing “healthy and safe food and drinking water” under a changing global environment.
Aged nature-like and extensively used ecosystems (e.g. naturally mixed forests) are quasi self-organized in production of biomass and appropriation of nutrients. In contrast intensively used ecosystems, such as farmland, are permanently imbalanced systems, e.g. with a high demand on additional nutrients balancing at minimum the export by harvest. Global climate change will increase this imbalance pressure: Extreme climate events and thus increasing disparities in precipitation and temperature can cause temporary or permanent damages on specific soil functions. Thus, new strategies must be developed for compensating such imbalances.
- Microbial community on carrier material
The development of tools for actively affecting specific soil functions with a high sustainability is an important step to (re-)act upon the new challenges given by the global climate chance. Such tools will be the basis for producing healthy food plants and providing uncontaminated drinking water and less atmospheric loading in the future.