Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry
The Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry is a research institute founded in 1997 in the field of Earth System, Jena. It is part of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science eV
The program of the institute encompasses the planning and implementation of critical model experiments, the comparison between model and observation, as well as the linking of palaeodata and present findings. Accordingly, biologists, meteorologists, geoscientists, chemists, physicists and mathematicians to work interdisciplinary. Central facilities of the institute to support the work of the academic departments with measurement of stable isotopes, 14C analysis, chemical analysis, data processing and with the organization of long-term field experiments.
Scientific objectives and organization
The Institute defines the following scientific objectives:
- Quantifying the role of these interactions for controlling the climate of the Earth at a time of increasing anthropogenic influences
- Development of a quantitative and predictive understanding of the regulation of processes in ecosystems and their biogeochemical cycles under changing climatic conditions
- Investigation of the feedback mechanisms of the terrestrial surface with its vegetation cover on the composition of the atmosphere.
The Institute has three departments (as of December 2013)
- Biogeochemical processes (Director: Susan Trumbore )
- Biogeochemical Systems (Director: Martin Heimann )
- Biogeochemical integration (Director: Markus Reichstein )
The former head of department and founding director Ernst -Detlef Schulze research as Emeritus Group in the Department of Biogeochemical Processes. Ernst -Detlef Schulze was awarded in 2006 with the German Environmental Award. Martin Heimann is senior author on the assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC ), the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Susan Trumbore was elected to the National Academy of Science, 2010.
Issues
A central question with which the Institute is concerned is how ecosystems and biogeochemical cycles respond to changing conditions of climate, land use and diversity. Here, different scientific disciplines are involved and a connection between modeling and observation, as well as between theoretical and experimental research made .
Of course, conditional and running on very different time scales changes in the concentration of trace gases superimpose be influenced by anthropogenic influences such as the use of fossil fuels, deforestation, agriculture and forestry, which release carbon dioxide and the Earth's atmosphere and the Earth's climate. Nitrogen and freshwater influence in the same way the "System Earth".
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry want to find out whether and to what extent the nature of people can compensate for disturbances caused to what extent the overall Earth system moves into new quasi-stationary states and whether they will be suitable for life for humans. Similarly, the biogeochemical cycles of the land use by humans and the interventions in biodiversity, the biodiversity of the living environment and the functional structure of their ecosystems are investigated.
For this purpose as targeted experiments to detect functional relationships be performed. To get to the adaptability of organisms to close from the past into the future, as well as paleoclimate and paleoecological investigations are made.
Global biogeochemical cycles
In the study of global biogeochemical cycles it comes to understand an extremely complex system as a whole to learn, which is formed from numerous and different subsystems. These subsystems are linked by a variety of interactions and thus influence each other.
Example factor for such linkages greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2 ), methane ( CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O ) and water vapor are (H2O). In the air, these gases are indeed present only in low concentrations, however, in quite crucially the Earth's climate and the living conditions for all on her living organisms.
The concentration and distribution of these gases are controlled by biological, chemical and physical processes that occur in the terrestrial biosphere in the oceans and in the atmosphere - and they are modified by both planetary and by human influences. So there were changes of the Earth's orbit around the sun and variations in solar irradiance to the known ice ages.