Forschung

Recent Publications

Fierke, S., Putzenlechner, B., Simon, A., Gowda, J.H., Reiter, R.J., Walentwoski, H., Kappas, M. (2025): Modelling microclimatic variability in Andean forests of northern Patagonia. International Journal of Biometeorology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-025-02891-x

Putzenlechner, B., Bevern, F., Koal, P., Grieger, S., Kappas, M., Koukal, T., Löw, M., Filipponi, F. (2024): Accuracy assessment of LAI, PAI and FCOVER from Sentinel-2 and GEDI for monitoring forests and their disturbance in Central Germany. European Journal of Remote Sensing 57(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/22797254.2024.2422323

Current Research Projects

BMBF-REGULUS-Verbundvorhaben "ResEt-Fi": Wegbereiter Wiederbewaldung: Regionales Flächenmanagement zur Entwicklung multifunktionaler Wälder auf gestörten Fichtenflächen
in Kooperation mit:
- Forstliches Forschungs- und Kompetenzzentrum Gotha/ThüringenForst
- Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
- TU Dresden
- Universität Bayreuth
- Hessisches Landesamt für Naturschutz, Umwelt und Geologie (HLNUG)

Laufzeit: 01.02.2023 - 31.01.2026
Förderkennzeichen: 033L304B

> Pressemitteilung zum Projekt
> Interne Seite zum TP Fernerkundung
> Website ResEt-Fi: www.reset-fi.de

Mitarbeitende im Teilprojekt Fernerkundung:
- Simon Grieger (Doktorand)
- Simon Schulze (SHK)
- N.N. (SHK)

Agenda of the Group

Recent years have highlighted extreme meteorological events such as summer droughts as already present disruptive agents in Central Europe, posing unprecedented challenges for both agriculture and forestry. The natural recovery capacity of these ecosystems was often exceeded (at least in the short and medium term). In view of the greater intensity and frequency of disturbances, the concern arises that ecosystems will find themselves in a loop or even cascade of disturbances without being able to return to stable or climax stages in the long term.

The group conducts interdisciplinary research in both forests and agricultural landscapes as part of an overall ecosystem in the temperate climate zone. As landscape resilience, i.e., the capacity of landscapes to respond to disturbances and adapt to changes over time, is naturally driven by interconnected processes and feedbacks, our aim is to unravel forest-agriculture-feedbacks.
From this background, questions of “optimal” land management strategies arise in order to maintain, enable or even increase landscape resilience. With the ultimate goal of providing tailored and site-specific solutions for land management, we challenge the overarching hypothesis that multifunctional landscapes exhibit greater resilience to environmental disturbances compared to landscapes with limited functionality forms and thereby provide a basis for understanding the complex interplay between agricultural and forest functions. Landscapes characterized by multifunctional ecosystems – encompassing diverse habitats, land cover types, land use practices (intensities), and interconnected ecological corridors – may provide a robust framework for maintaining ecological balance and adapting to stressors such as climate variability, pest outbreaks, and other disturbances, ensuring continued ecosystem productivity.

Despite the recognized potential of multifunctional landscapes in the context of landscape resilience, there is a significant gap in the development of appropriate monitoring tools as well as interdisciplinary research efforts to understand the intricate feedbacks between agricultural and forest systems. Central research questions are:

- How do we assess landscape resilience?
- What are the main drivers of landscape resilience towards which set of disturbance agent(s)?
- How can we balance management for long-term resilience and short-term action plans?

It is evident that an innovative toolset of methods and a thorough look at the geographical and socio-economic setting of the landscape of interest will be needed to tackle these questions. Therefore, a nuanced comprehension of the primary disturbances affecting these landscapes, including their intensity and spatial distribution, is essential for assessing resilience and guiding land management options. In this context, research activities target at:

- advancing monitoring systems for landscape resilience,
- employing models to elucidate feedback mechanisms between agricultural and forest ecosystems and
- testing and developing land management strategies fostering landscape resilience.