Conservation Ecology

Species-based environmental research for monitoring of ecosystem health and biodiversity change is an emerging field in biology. Our newly established Center for Biodiversity Monitoring (Zentrum für Biodiversitätsmonitoring - zbm) will amend the profile of the ZFMK with aspects of species-based environmental research and deliver extremely important evidence on causes and consequences of biodiversity loss. Research in the zbm will complement the infrastructural German research landscape and strengthen the field of species-based environmental research by adding the fields of population biology and conservation ecology.

The new zbm section Conservation Ecology is dedicated

• to the development and application of innovative biodiversity monitoring approaches,
• to detecting trends in biodiversity change,
• to investigating the ecological structure in natural communities and species assemblages,
• to understanding causes and consequences of species decline,
• to modelling scenarios for the future,
• to providing evidence-based solutions for biodiversity conservation and the sustainable use of natural resources,
• to improving cooperation between amateurs, agencies and researchers in the field of biodiversity research.

Already today, we are implementing large joint research projects within the zbm section Environmental Biology, such as SustainCBW (obstacles to nature conservation and sustainable development in biodiversity hotspots), INPEDIV (causes of insect declines and consequences for ecological communities in German protected areas), DINA (agricultural impact on biodiversity in German protected areas and implications for spatial planning), and AMMOD (construction of automated multi-sensor stations for biodiversity monitoring).

Those large third-party funded collaborative research projects ­- partly initiated and led by ZFMK – aim at detecting biodiversity change over time and at understanding underlying causes and resulting consequences. Our hypotheses-based research will pave the ground for adaptive solutions to halt biodiversity loss and for evidence-based policy recommendations. By these means, the zbm section Environmental Biology will complement insights from research conducted by government departments at the state and federal level in Germany and deliver scientific support to meet monitoring obligations.

Innovative technological developments and application-oriented interdisciplinary research in the section Environmental Biology is closely linked to the other two zbm sections Metabarcoding and Environmental Genomics. Moreover, the zbm will generate added value by employing and advancing existing infrastructures at the zmb (Biobank, GBOL database) and the zte (biodiversity informatics, morphological reference collections).