Abstract:
The Newsletter presents a summary of five years of research (Speakers' Corner) and provides insight in latest results of the nutrient addition experiments, the competition between bracken and pasture grass, mycorrhization, climate change research and recent modelings, the advances of the data warehouse and the Laser Scanning Mission as well as achievements in afforestation experiments (Science News). This issue also informs about recent progress of the foundation NCI, the status of the two transfer projects and the biodiversity results of the cooperating partner project. The vast biodiversity of the tropical mountain forests once attracted German scientists to start the interdisciplinary research in the remote area of the Ecuadorian Rio San Francisco Valley. Now, after a total of 15 years of German-Ecuadorian research, they have unveiled features hitherto unknown regarding ecosystem constitution, functioning, and services. As they observed this unique ecosystem is locally threatened by non-sustainable land uses like pasture farming. Therefore they developed a science-directed sustainable land use portfolio based on their results and the resilience of the ecosystem against environmental changes. Their recommendations after 6 years of German-Ecuadorian research in the scope of FOR816 include intensification, diversification, restoration and conservation, and to monitor the impacts of ongoing environmental change.
