Overview

How do ecosystems respond to changing weather patterns, rising temperatures and increasing carbon dioxide concentrations? Is the effect of precipitation more important than that of temperature? Or are ecosystem dynamics more strongly affected by nutrient availability? What is the role of extreme events in shaping biogeochemical cycles? To find out the answers we need to understand the interactions among three complex systems: climate, vegetation, and soil. Thus, we combine experiments and in-situ long-term observation with Earth observations gathered by aircraft and satellites across a range of spatial scales, and embrace data-driven machine learning and theory-driven mechanistic modelling. With our research, we try to understand how the terrestrial biosphere reacts to and exerts feedbacks on ongoing environmental change and variation in atmospheric conditions.

Latest key papers

Fan, N., Koirala, S., Reichstein, M., Thurner, M., Avitabile, V., Santoro, M., Ahrens, B., Weber, U., Carvalhais, N. (2020). Apparent ecosystem carbon turnover time: uncertainties and robust features. Earth System Science Data, 12(4), 2517-2536. doi:10.5194/essd-12-2517-2020. (internal: final.pdf suppl1.pdf )

	Küçük, Ç., Koirala, S., Carvalhais, N., Miralles, D., Reichstein, M., Jung, M. (in press). Characterising the response of vegetation cover to water limitation in Africa using geostationary satellites. Earth and Space Science Open Archive (ESSOAr). doi:10.1002/essoar.10504964.1.
	Li, W., Migliavacca, M., Forkel, M., Walther, S., Reichstein, M., Orth, R. (2020). Revisiting global vegetation controls using multi-layer soil moisture. Earth and Space Science Open Archive (ESSOAr). doi:10.1002/essoar.10504463.1. (internal: final.pdf )
	Tramontana, G., Migliavacca, M., Jung, M., Reichstein, M., Keenan, T. F., Camps-Valls, G., Ogee, J., Verrelst, J., Papale, D. (2020). Partitioning net carbon dioxide fluxes into photosynthesis and respiration using neural networks. Global Change Biology, 26(9), 5235-5253. doi:10.1111/gcb.15203. (internal: suppl1.docx final.pdf )
	Yu, L., Ahrens, B., Wutzler, T., Zaehle, S., Schrumpf, M. (2020). Modeling soil responses to nitrogen and phosphorus fertilization along a soil phosphorus stock gradient. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 3: 543112. doi:10.3389/ffgc.2020.543112. (internal: final.pdf suppl1.docx )