Plant matter production

Staff-members involved
J. Augustin, D. Lüttschwager, Th. Müller

Plant production provides high-energy organic carbon compounds required to drive biological processes, e.g. those related with growth and the multiplication of all organisms. Primary plant production as well as matter transformation processes are subject to an ever stronger impact by human activities. In particular, high use intensities when producing food and raw materials often result in an uncontrolled release and spread of environmentally hazardous substances. That is why a precise assessment of the impact of land-use and climatic changes on plant matter production is needed. Proceeding from the current political requirements there is a great demand for such know-how which is seen as a prerequisite for the development of efficient and innovative land use systems, in particular with regard to energy plants.

At present, the knowledge of plant matter production proves still too fragmentary and contradictory so as to come up to these requirements. This applies specifically to the landscape level which does define decisively the conditions under which production processes operate being relevant for the production of food and raw materials. Furthermore, landscapes constitute the pivotal link between the bio-geochemical processes operating on the micro- and global scale.

A particularly serious problem hampering the understanding of the matter production and transformation processes at landscape level, lies in the deficient knowledge of the significance of discrete contact or frontier zones between eco-systems or landscape elements. At this scale level, a large number of these zones can be found which, in relation to their surroundings, are of reduced extension, but do reveal a much higher intensity of matter production and matter transformations. Nor are there, on account of the knowledge deficits and the high complexity, any viable ideas on how spatially and temporally structured interactions inside landscape elements including neighbourhood relations between them (e.g lateral nutrient transfer or retention) are to be reproduced in models. The glaring lack of appropriate tools (e.g. measurement methods, experimental programmes, simulation models) for the precise recording and evaluation of all the mentioned processes at landscape level, add to this difficulty.

Proceeding from this situation, research being done by the Institute to implement ZALF's concept for the development of rural areas will first of all concentrate on priorities of current relevance:

Significance of plant matter production and matter transformation in functionally discrete frontier zones for the matter balance of landscapes -  Conversion dynamics of rhizodeposition (DFG-SPP 1090) -  Studies on the influence of the photosynthetic capacity on the     dynamics of competition between different plant species of a     meadow   Regional implications of changed climatic and land use conditions on plant matter production and matter transformations -  Influence of thinning in forest conversion on the transpiration of an    adult Scots pine stand (cooperation with the Federal-state forestry    Institute of Eberswalde under the BMBF-sponsored priority    programme "Future-oriented forestry") -  Improvement and application of dynamic simulation models describing the water, C and N balances, as well as the development    of forest eco-systems of Pleistocene sites under changed management and environmental conditions (in cooperation with Dr. Jochheim,  Dr. Wegehenkel (LSA))    CO2 sequestration by plant matter production -  Studies on the photosynthetic capacity and modelling of the net primary production of plant species with relevant production of biomass at a fen site (in cooperation with the University of Poznan) -  Influence of reflooding of degraded peatlands of the Peene valley on    the dynamics of C transformation processes and the emission of    greenhouse gases (CO2, C2O, CH4) (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern    Pomerania federal-state project, in cooperation with the Institute of    Hydrological Ecology of Berlin and the University of Poznan)