3) Experimental investigation of impacts of landuse

Based on field experiments and observational studies we investigate the effect of different forestry treatments on the biodiverisy, forest site and regeneration of forests. We would like to contribute to the development on ecologically sustainable forest management and conservation management strategies.

We study the impacts of the most common modes of land use on animal communities of grassland habitats in field experiments and observations. We quantify changes in multiple groups of animals (arthropods, amphibians, birds, small mammals) along a gradient of land use intensity (intensive and extensive croplands; livestock grazing and mowing in degraded, restored and seminatural grasslands and in natural alkali and loess grasslands, and along a dry-wet gradient of habitat types (dry loess grasslands, alkali grasslands, temporarily inundated meadows, alkali marshes). The study will provide knowledge that can be directly used in the practice of nature conservation and serves as a foundation for the detailed study of community assembly (5.2.) and ecosystem functions and services (6.).

We examine the effects of perturbations on the organization of aquatic communities. We compare the diversity of fish communities in streams which differ in land use effects (e.g. in conservational, agricultural and urban landscapes). We present a novel river area protection and barrier removal decision planning model to optimize the protection of biological integrity, connectivity restoration and ecosystem services delivery goals at the waterbasin scale.