Master students of biology and geoecology from the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen visited the Exploratorium Schwäbische-Alb last week. As part of the master's module Plant Ecology, this excursion took place for the third year in a row. This year it was organized by Maria Majekove, from the BE project ExploreNiche. The excursion included visits to two forest and two grassland areas with different management intensities, which gave the students a good impression of the areas. In addition, they […]
The Department of Biology at the University of Ulm celebrated its 50th anniversary on June 13, 2023. At a reception followed by a celebration, institute members and biology enthusiasts from all over the city came together. In a keynote speech by Markus Fischer, he emphasized the extinction of species and included a call to action to society - "We are at the beginning of a mass extinction if we do nothing about it." German news article:
The Exploratorien are with their research results on television. "It has become quiet in Germany's forests, they are running out of insects...." - reports the Hessian broadcast, Hessicher Rundfunk. In this contribution Dr. Michael Staab, from the TU Darmstadt, leads the viewers into our exploratories and explains their research and connections of the insect death in German forests. Duration: 06:27Min.
The meaning of deadwood in the forest, decomposition processes of rats by small animals and microbes, as well as the effect of clear-cutting on bats, among other things, are being researched at the exploratory in Hainich-Dün. In addition to familiar and well-tried research methods, artificial intelligence is being used as a research tool in the course of the new funding phase. For a more exact and faster data acquisition it is applied in two areas: Counting and identification of insect […]
Last Thursday, our 19th Biodiversity Exploratories Assembly ended. It was three long, but also interesting and exchange-filled days packed with project presentations, scientific discussions and informative keynote presentations. Even though everything went well and we were happy about every single participant and contribution, we also understand that online conferences are exhausting and face-to-face exchange is hampered. Therefore, we keep our fingers crossed that hopefully next year in week 8 (21.02-24.02.23) we will be able to exchange in person again (probably […]
On Dec. 15, 2021, the DFG published the call for proposals for the upcoming phase (2023-2026) of the Biodiversity Exploratories. The call can be found on the DFG website under "Informationen für die Wissenschaft Nr. 114". We have also summarized the most important dates as well as the pdf of the call again under "Participation" and "Dates".
240 researchers and practitioners came together virtually and on site in the Swabian Alb biosphere region to exchange ideas on basic principles, developments and sustainable solutions for the protection of biodiversity. Current findings on the decline of biodiversity highlight an acute need for action and call for an interdisciplinary exchange between scientists, regional decision-makers and other stakeholders. This exchange was promoted by the research platform "Biodiversity Exploratories" funded by the German Research Foundation, in particular the Institute for Evolutionary Ecology […]
Explorers of the project "BEF-Up" and scientists of the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre Frankfurt recently published a study in the journal "People and Nature" with the title: "Cultural worldviews consistently explain bundles of ecosystem service prioritisation across rural Germany". Therefore, 321 people from the exploratories were surveyed about their worldviews, but also about their ecosystem service prioritisation (e.g. food production, an aesthetic landscape). As a result, so-called 'worldview types' could be identified, who prioritise certain ecosystem services, but […]
On Saturday 25.9.2021 Wolfgang Weisser presented important results of the Biodiversity Exploratories at the symposium "Biodiversity and the Future of Diversity" on the occasion of the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. The title of the presentation was "Land use and communities in ecosystems - on the need for large-scale field research".
In the context of the Nature Concert Hall, which was organized by the NABU Nature Experience Center Blumberger Mühle on July 19, several video contributions were made around the topic "meadow". Members of the Exploratories also helped out and gave interesting insights on various topics about biodiversity and meadow. In one of the contributions, Dr. Franca Marian from LMT Schorfheide introduces grassland in general with its biodiversity and function and interviews the speaker Prof. Dr. Markus Fischer about the Biodiversity […]
