Exploratories for large-scale and long-term functional biodiversity research: the core project

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To advance biodiversity research in Germany, we established three exemplary large-scale and long-term research platforms (Biodiversity Exploratories). They are providing the scientific infrastructure (in terms of management, research plots, installations, baseline monitoring and experimentation, and data base) and intellectual framework (in terms of study design) to study land-use effects on biodiversity and to evaluate the impacts of those changes for ecosystem processes. The Exploratories are merging biodiversity and ecosystem research; two disciplines which so far mainly operated separately. In each Exploratory we implemented a common study design consisting of 1000, 100, and 18 plots distributed in the landscape. The sets of plots consist of equal numbers of grassland and forest plots and each set covers a wide range of land-use intensities. In addition to setting up the Exploratories, the core project is focusing on exemplary research including observational monitoring of selected taxa (of plants, fungi, animals and microorganisms) and selected processes, and experimental manipulation. In February 2008, 26 further contributing projects proposed by researchers all over Germany integrated into the project and in February 2009, 8 more are following. For the coming 20-month-phase of the core project we propose five work packages continuing the management, data base, and research activities, providing important baseline data, undertaking exemplary experimental manipulations contributing to the platform, and underlining the need for integrating innovative methods.