Structure at a Glance

 

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Research Areas​

ZALF derives its research questions from societal questions which are of high relevance in agricultural landscapes. They are addressed in three interdisciplinary Research Areas (RA), which are closely interlinked via topical and methodological interfaces. While Research Area 1 "Landscape Functioning" deals with processes, feedbacks and cause-and-effect relationships in agricultural landscapes, Research Area 2 "Land Use and Governance" focuses on the interactions between agricultural use, ecosystem services and biodiversity as well as on suitable governance approaches for the sustainable development of agricultural landscapes. Taking into account the results from Research Areas 1 and 2 as well as external data and knowledge sources, Research Area 3 "Agricultural Landscape systems" develops methods and applications to synthesize the analytical understanding of natural and socio-economic processes in landscapes into action-relevant knowledge, thereby making it available for comprehensive impact assessments as well as decision support for actors in business, politics, science and society.​

Innovation Centre for Agricultural System Transformation

The Innovation Centre for Agricultural System Transformation (IAT)​ will be established as a new research and service unit of ZALF in cooperation with the Justus Liebig University Giessen, the University of Kassel and Hochschule Geisenheim University. The focus will be on the joint development of sustainable and context-related solutions for agricultural and food systems in co-design processes. From 2026, five Living Labs are to be established in Brandenburg and Hesse in cooperation with regional stakeholders. Long-term, multi-decade cooperation structures will be developed with relevant stakeholders in land use and policy, both locally and at the landscape scale.

Research and Infrastructure Platforms

The thematic work in the Research Areas is reinforced and interlinked by a Research Platform, which combines research and services. The Research Platform "Data analysis & Simulation" drives research activities on agricultural landscape data and models and develops analysis and simulation methods. Furthermore it delivers services for thematic research in the Research Areas. The numerous ZALF research infrastructures at the field and landscape scale are clustered in the "Experimental Infrastructure Platform". The two platforms therefore play a special role in the integration of the thematic research activities in the Research Areas. They enable ZALF to collect, provide and evaluate research data and modeling results from modern agricultural landscape research in an efficient, goal- and user-oriented manner.