








Last Friday, Ramona Heim was awarded the WWU Dissertation Prize by the Rector of WWU, Prof Dr Johannes Wessels, for her dissertation on "Fire ecology in Eurasian wetland and tundra ecosystems". The awarded dissertation consists of five international peer-reviewed articles, the last two of which were published this year in the very renowned journals Global Change Biology and Biogeosciences. We congratulate Ramona on the award and wish her good luck in her new position as a postdoc in the Spatial Ecology & Remote Sensing group (Prof. Dr. Gabriela Schaepman-Strub) at the Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.
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In early summer 2017, the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research Group organized an expedition to the Betpak Dala, a steppe-and semi-desert region of Central Kazakhstan, to collect data on the impact of grazing on biodiversity and 'ecosystem services' in drylands along a steep climatic gradient over 350 km from the northern desert to the dry steppe. The research is part of the BIODESERT study, coordinated by Fernando T. Maestre of the Dryland Ecology and Global Change Lab at the University of Alicante in Spain. In addition to Norbert Hölzel and Frederike Velbert from our institute, Salza Palpurina and Viktoria Wagner from Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, as well as Tatyana Siderova (botanist) and Asel Esengalyeva (undergraduate student) from our partner organization ACBK (Association for the Protection of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan) were involved in the research.
The data from Kazakhstan have been incorporated into a global study published in the journal Science. Key findings were summarized in a short video.
The Institute of Landscape Ecology (ILÖK) has a vacancy for the position of an
Electronics Technician* or Electrical Engineer* to be filled, full-time and permanently.
Further information can be found here: Job Offer
On behalf of the Institute of Landscape Ecology, we cordially invite you to the ILÖK Colloquium in the winter semester 2022/23! The lectures are open to the public and will take place on Tuesdays at 18.15 h (Geo1; Autitorium). Prof. Dr. Tillmann Buttschardt und Dr.'in Cornelia Steinhäuser will spotlight the work of the recently deceased sociologist of knowledge and philosopher Bruno Latour from an interdisciplinary perspective. The contribution has the title: "In the critical zone or 'Gaia c'est le nom'" on 2022/11/08. The lecture will be held in German language. The event is creditable in MSc Lök, module M1.
Find the abstract, dial-in and further informations by browsing this website.
The Biosphere-Atmosphere Interaction group has set up a new long-term eddy covariance measurement system in the Amtsvenn peatland in NRW. Using this system the group will quantify the exchange of greenhouse gases between the ecosystem and the atmosphere, to better understand the feedback from degraded peatlands to climate change.
From 9th to 13th September the ILÖK hosted the 49th annual conference of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (GfÖ) in the premises of the Fürstenberghaus. With 689 participants from 25 countries, the conference was one of the best attended GfÖ conferences in the past decades. In eight parallel sessions 380 talks and 180 posters were presented. According to the theme of the conference, many sessions dealt with topical environmental policy issues, such as urban air hygiene, climate change, the decline of insect populations and agricultural policy. The German-language sessions of the "Praktikertag" proved to be a demanded forum for exchange between researchers and practitioners of nature conservation and environmental protection. The conference ended with a conference dinner followed by a club night at the music club Jovel, excursions to the Emsaue and Rieselfelder Münster as well as to the ILÖK's restoration projects in limestone quarries of the Teutoburg Forest and peat extraction sites near Vechta.
This year, the ILÖK celebrates its 25th anniversary. On this occasion the institute had invited on 10.09.2019 in the context of the annual conference of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (GfÖ) in Münster to a small celebration, attended by more than 80 former and active institute members. Also present were the two founding fathers of the Institute, Prof. Dr. Karl-Friedrich Schreiber and Prof. Dr. Friedrich-Karl Holtmeier, whose untiring efforts over many years have largely led to the founding of the Institute. After greetings of the dean of the department Prof. Dr. Harald Strauss and of the former AStA chairman and ILÖK graduate Dr. Josef Tumbrinck (today sub-department head nature conservation in the BMU), the managing director of the institute Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Norbert Hölzel gave a brief overview of the development of the Institute since its foundation [PDF download] [non-accessible] [de] in 1994. The evening ended with a lively exchange and a friendly get-together of the guests.