SPP 1374 - Subproject: Effects of disturbance and seed addition on plant community assembly and ecosystem functions (ESCAPE)

Basic data for this project

Description

The assessment of biomass production, chemical constituents, functional composition and horizontal micro-structures of grassland canopies is of crucial importance for the disentangling of biodiversity patterns. Such information is of great significance for the testing of fundamental theories and hypotheses such as the relation between productivity and structural heterogeneity on the one hand and species-richness at various trophical levels and spatial scales on the other hand. Currently, such essential data are not available for the plots of the biodiversity exploratories in Germany. We apply for a project providing such data in a very efficient and cost effective way using techniques of spectroscopy. Based on wet chemical analyses of biomass samples, calibration models will be developed for the quick and cheap measurement of plant tissue constituents applying near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) in the laboratory as well as for multi-temporal and non-destructive measurements of canopy attributes of entire plots using imaging spectroscopy in the field. The data can be combined and related with many other biodiversity data sampled on the plots. They are particularly useful for pattern assessment and theory testing. Moreover, the elaborated calibration models can be used by other research groups for the quick and cheap assessment of stand structures and biomass composition. These methods are allowing an unbiased high number of spatial and temporal replications that are impossible to handle with traditional methods. During the first two years we will concentrate on grassland canopies. For the future the method could be extended to forest canopies (tree leaves), litter and humus.