The TERENO Pre-Alpine Observatory covers parts of the Bavarian Alps (Ammergau Mountains) and their foreland, with the Ammer and Rott catchment (655 km2) areas at its core. The setup of the observatory in this region was motivated by the fact that such mountain areas have been exposed to more intense warming compared with the global average trend and to higher frequencies of extreme hydrological events, such as droughts and intensive rainfall. Analyses of the temperature time series for the Mount Hohenpeissenberg German Weather Service station reveal a mean temperature increase of 1.5°C for the years 1880 to 2012. This corresponds to around twice the globally averaged combined land and ocean surface temperature increase of 0.78°C and clearly exceeds the average global land temperature increase of 1.17°C for the same period.

Due to the dominance in land cover particularly in the valley bottoms, most of the individual measuring sites operated in the TERENO Pre-Alpine Observatory are established on grassland sites. Similar to even larger areas in Austria, Italy, France, Switzerland, and other mountainous regions of the world, these alpine and pre-alpine sites are mainly used for fodder production and thus provide important economic value through milk and meat production. However, grassland cultivations are not only of eminent importance economically; they also provide various ecosystem services that regulate, support, and underpin the environment we live in. These environmental services include the function of soils for (i) C and N storage, with feedback to climate change, soil fertility, and biodiversity; (ii) water retention; and (iii) recreation and tourism. Climate change can impose severe threats to the aforementioned functions and will require agricultural adaptations to further sustain food and fodder production.

Ralf Kiese: Bodennutzung im Alpenvorland (ger)

Strong collaboration with numerous well-experienced partner institutions in the region is a fundamental part of our philosophy. Presently, the following partners are involved, but the programme will stay open for all interested partners even after funding will have started in 2011.

Institutes of the Leibniz Association:

ZALF Leibniz-Zentrum für Agrarlandschaftsforschung e.V
IGB Leibniz-Institut für Gewässerökologie und Binnenfischerei, Berlin

Government Agencies:

Nationalparkamt Müritz
Biosphärenreservat Schorfheide Chorin

Governmental Research Institutes:

Deutsches Archäologisches Institut
Johann Heinrich von Thünen-Institut, Bundesforschungsinstitut für Ländliche Räume, Wald und Fischerei

Academies:

acatech - Deutsche Akademie der Technikwissenschaften

Universities:

Universität Potsdam
Universität Cottbus
Universität Greifswald
Humboldt Universität Berlin
Freie Universität Berlin
Technische Universität Berlin
Universität Szczecin
Universität Rostock

Coordination Teams

Read more …Coordination Teams

Research in Urban System is dedicated to the monitoring of growing or shrinking cities regarding their terrestrial compartments and the demographic and social situation of the residents. Urban systems possess their own characteristics and nowadays belong to the dominating and most dynamic systems on earth. The development of these systems is influenced by the availability of resources such as space, clean air, water, energy and solid matters (e.g. raw materials, food) and affected by climate change. Urban systems continuously consume resources, and emit them into the ambient terrestrial and aquatic systems in an altered way. At the same time, living conditions in cities are influenced for humans and nature and the dynamics of urban development impaired, including their potential to regenerate. As the urban system belongs to the terrestrial system, it is part of the ongoing research to understand local, regional and global developments. At present, the research centres UFZ and KIT provide relevant competences and different methodological spectra to combine scientific approaches with empirical evidences in the urban areas in TERENO. Both centres aim at cooperating with other Helmholtz centres for the benefit of a comprehensive urban system`s research.

It is the goal of urban system to elaborate monitoring methods and strategies by embedding processes that influence humans and are influenced by humans, and to couple them with physical-chemical processes under investigation.

To design a sustainable urban development, the UFZ understands resource efficiency, quality of life and resilience as the central backbone of urban transformations. The centre focuses on urban areas in different cultural contexts regarding shrinking and growing processes and develops different dimensions for options of change. Along this backbone, specific foci are put on land-use changes, urban ecosystem services, sustainable water infrastructures and urban environmental risks. In the frame of research on climate and environment, KIT investigates urban systems with the focus on physical, meteorological and air quality processes in the ambient terrestrial compartments against the background of global change.

Members

Ellen Banzhaf (UFZ)
Stefan Emeis (KIT – IMK-IFU)
Annegret Haase (UFZ)
Sigrun Kabisch (UFZ)
Roland Krämer (UFZ)
Dieter Rink (UFZ)
Klaus Schäfer (KIT – IMK-IFU)
Uwe Schlink (UFZ)
Hannes Taubenböck (DLR)

The analysis of past climate and environment variability has a strong focus on a combination of various archives as lake and reservoir sediments, kettle holes, peat bogs, soils and tree-rings in order to (1) provide a wide range of proxy data that cover all compartments and aspects of landscape change and (2) transforming point-scale information into a regional-scale context. Another important aspect is the link of the obtained information from the past with modern instrumental observation data provided by the other CTs within TERENO enabling calibrated palaeoclimate reconstructions at an unprecedented level of detail and temporal accuracy.

In addition to a broad range of proxy data (geochemical, geophysical, sedimentological, and biological) applied the combination of different geo-archives necessitates particular dating efforts. We will utilize a multiple dating approach including all state-of-the-art incremental and radiometric techniques. Backbone of these chronologies will be annual layer counts of tree rings and annual laminations in lake sediments because accurate calendar year time scales are essential. This concept allows proving data of past changes on comparable time scales as modern instrumental data. The link of instrumental and proxy data will be achieved by connecting remote sensing, automated observation systems with regular discrete sampling and sophisticated devices to recover long palaeo-records.