Professorship of Environment Modeling

The Environment Modeling group was established in September 2023 at the Institute of Crop Science and Resource Conservation (INRES) of Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Bonn, within the frame of the Cluster of Excellence “PhenoRob”. The group focuses on understanding the interaction between ecosystems and the atmosphere, with a special focus on exchanges of trace gas fluxes.

Eine Wissenschaftlerin und ein Wissenschaftler arbeiten hinter einer Glasfassade und mischen Chemikalien mit Großgeräten.

Topic

We study agro-ecosystems to assess how management practices under specific environmental conditions can promote climate-smart agriculture, i.e. sustainable increases in agricultural productivity and mitigation and adaptation to climate change. We are also interested in natural ecosystems, to understand how anthropogenic interventions affect ecosystem-atmosphere interactions. Specifically, the research goals of the group are:

1) to quantify greenhouse gas and energy fluxes between ecosystems and the atmosphere and to understand the mechanisms responsible for the fluxes and their interactions with carbon sequestration;

2) to study how management practices can help to mitigate and adapt to climate change;

3) to study the microclimatic conditions in different land uses, including the effects of novel management practices and agroforestry.

Research Methodology

The group has a field measurement-based approach as a core research methodology, at a range of spatial scales (from individual plants to whole ecosystems) using state-of-the art measurement techniques, both ground-based and micrometeorological approaches. The group also conducts smaller-scale laboratory incubations as well as pots or mesocosm studies, to deepen the mechanistic understanding of fluxes and test hypotheses for further field studies. We combine observations with a range of modelling approaches for upscaling and providing policy recommendations on how different land uses or management practices influence greenhouse gas and energy fluxes under different climatic scenarios.