Report on microplastic investigations in the Rieselfelder published in "Lokalzeit Münsterland"

The Lokalzeit Münsterland of the WDR reported on 17.7.23 about the microplastic investigations in the sewage fields of Münster ("Rieselfelder"). The team around Dr. Friederike Gabel (ILÖK) and Prof. Dr. Bodo Philipp (Institute for Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology) investigated the occurrence and distribution of microplastics in the bird paradise of the Rieselfelder. This revealed a very clear but heterogeneous contamination by microplastics. What effects this has on the animals living there still requires further research.

The report can be found here (German only).

Jeannine-Böhmichen-Prize 2022 awarded

The Jeannine Böhmichen Prize for 2022 was awarded during the Geo.Science.Day on 15.06.2023. The prize is awarded to a Bachelor's thesis that, among other things, presents complex issues from landscape ecology in a clear and concise manner, independently raises questions of high originality or topicality, presents multi-layered information in a clear and concise manner or demonstrates the creative scope of students.

Prof. Dr. Tillmann Buttschardt gave the laudation and presented the award certificate to Isabelle Walgath. She received the award for her Bachelor's thesis with the topic: The effect size of watercourse margins of different widths on the ecological condition of an agriculturally influenced watercourse.

We warmly congratulate the award winner!

New research paper from the ILÖK in PNAS

Wild plants can change when propagated agriculturally:
A new study examines the rapid domestication of wild plants that are agriculturally propagated for restoration purposes.

Link to the WWU press release

Original publication

ILÖK Researchers win Citizen Science Award 2022

Urban gardening in the village and health promotion in the city district - these are the winning projects of the WWU Foundation's Citizen Science Competition 2022. They were now presented at the event "Mitdenken - Mitmachen - Mitforschen. An evening for civic engagement in science and research". The winners can look forward to a grant of 7,500 euros each.
After the successful student project "Monitoring of modern agroforestry ecosystems" in 2020, the CS Prize once again goes to researchers from the Institute of Landscape Ecology.
The artists' village Schöppingen is the focus of the winning project "Transformations in Münsterland". The community garden, kitchen, workshop, library, gallery and exhibition hall are understood as places of learning and knowledge for the citizens. What contribution can the village make as a socio-ecologically oriented actor for sustainable regional development? To this end, artists exchange ideas with students of landscape ecology and sociology on the significance of urban gardens for community building. Prof. Dr. Matthias Grundmann from the Institute of Sociology, Dr. Cornelia Steinhäuser from the Institute of Landscape Ecology and Julia Haarmann from the Foundation Künstlerdorf Schöppingen are leading the project.

Dissertation Prize for Ramona Heim

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.

Links:

• Heim RJ et al. (2022) Fire disturbance promotes biodiversity of plants, lichens and birds in the Siberian subarctic tundra. Global Change Biology, 28(3), 1048-1062 [doi: 10.1111/gcb.15963]
• Heim RJ et al. (2022) Fire in lichen-rich subarctic tundra changes carbon and nitrogen cycling between ecosystem compartments but has minor effects on stocks. Biogeosciences, 19(10), 2729-2740 [doi: 10.5194/bg-19-2729-2022]
• University of Zurich https://www.ieu.uzh.ch/en/research/ecology/spatial.html

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.

• Link to the announcement in the wwu news
• Link to the Science paper
• Video of the University of Alicante

Job offer

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

ILÖK Colloquium in WS 2022/2023

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.

Latest Publications

Looking back: 49th annual conference of the GfÖ in Münster

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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.

25 years Institute of Landscape Ecology

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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.

Further Links

• Research at the Institute of Landscape Ecology
• Staff of the Institute of Landscape Ecology