Research
Climate and land use change are key drivers influencing terrestrial environmental systems that need to be managed by society in the coming decades. These changes act on all compartments of terrestrial systems and provoke system reactions on different spatial and temporal scales. The development of management and adaptation strategies to cope with these changes defines the key research fields in the Agrosphere. The development of these strategies is, however, hampered by our limited ability to predict states and fluxes in terrestrial systems at scales relevant for management and this issue constitutes the main core of our research activities in the institute.
Research at the Agrosphere is organized in three research areas: 1) Modelling of terrestrial systems, 2) Environmental processes and technologies and 3) Terrestrial biogeochemistry consisting of the following different research topics:
Modelling terrestrial systems
Soil-, root systems and rhizosphere processes
Functional-structural modelling of crop systems
Stochastic analysis of terrestrial systems
Modelling and management of catchments
Integrated modelling of terrestrial systems
Environmental processes and technologies
Vadose zone hydrogeophysics
Hydrogeophysical imaging and characterization
Environmental sensing and monitoring
Terrestrial observation platforms
Multiscale Geophysics of soil-plant systems
Terrestrial biogeochemistry
Plant-soil-atmosphere exchange processes
Bio-geo-chemical interfaces and colloids
Organic matter dynamics and element cycles