Biodiversity and Ecosystem services - Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research

Research group

BIOECOS

(BIOdiversity & ECOsystem Services)

News

June 2025: Elina Takola taught the course "Modelling species-habitat relationships across scales for nature conservation" at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg.

Older news

May 2025: Leslie Resch (University of Leipzig) joined the group for her Master thesis on the drivers of insect population dynamics. Welcome, Leslie!

April 2025: Jannatul Ferdous is back in the group for her Master thesis on individual-based modelling of agricultural bird movement. Welcome back, Jannatul!

March 2025: The decimatoR R package is a tool created by former research assistant in our group, Elizaveta Shcherbinina. This package facilitates the homogenization of coordinates from different sources. The software publication is available in Zenodo and GitHub. Congratulations, Elizaveta!

February 2025: Elina Takola was part of a broad collaboration of >300 scientists around the world. The project examined how the choice of different statistical models influences the results of an analysis. A publication with the title "Same data, different analysts: variation in effect sizes due to analytical decisions in ecology and evolutionary biology" is now published in the journal BMC Biology! Congratulations Elina!

January 2025: Our group has two new preprints online! Maximus Anochirim is leading the manuscript "The implementation of network meta-analysis in Ecology; a case study using crop yield data", where he showcases a new statistical method (i.e. network meta-analysis), borrowed by Medical Sciences. To our knowledge, this is one of the first implementations of network meta-analyses in Ecology. Congratulations Maximus! Moreover, Elina Takola is leading the manuscript "Does sustainable agriculture promote biodiversity and yield? A second-order meta-analysis". This is a broad quantitative synthesis of literature, aiming at exploring the relationship between biodiversity and productivity in croplands, grasslands and agroforestry systems. Congratulations Elina!

December 2024: Maximus Anochirim is participating in the annual meeting of the British Ecological Society in Liverpool with his project about implementing network meta-analyses in experimental ecological data.

December 2024: Our group is now on LinkedIn. Let's connect!

November 2024: We welcome Jannatul Ferdous to our group!

October 2024: Members of our group are participating in the annual conference of SORTEE (Society for Open, Reliable and Transparent Ecology and Evolutionary biology).

October 2024: We welcome Johanna Esguerra, Hayder Ramos Guerra and Olga Kuznetsova to our group!

October 2024: Today we had a farewell gathering for Dr. Michael Beckmann, who was the group leader of BIOECOS for the last few years. We are thankful to Micha for his important contribution and hard work. We wish him all the best for his new position!

September 2024: We welcome back Elizaveta Shcherbinina to our group! Elizaveta did her internship with us in the past and now she is re-joining as a student helper.

August 2024: Elina Takola is participating in the annual conference of the Ecological Society of America.

June 2024: We welcome back Maximus Anochirim to our group! Maximus did his internship with us in the past and now he is re-joining as a research assistant.

A visualization of the main tenets and components of our research; animals, their environment and data analyses (generated with DeepAI).

Our research focuses on monitoring, mapping and modeling spatio-temporal patterns of biodiversity and ecosystem services. It comprises conceptual work, syntheses and development of methods. Our aims are:

First, to understand the impacts of different land use systems on species distributions and the capacity of ecosystems to provide ecosystem services.
Secondly, to characterize and quantify trade-offs and synergies among ecosystem services and between ecosystem services and biodiversity.
Thirdly, to explore the suitability of information derived from remote sensing or other geospatial data to help inform decision-making and to develop future monitoring capabilities.

Collaboration across disciplines is of central importance for our research. We are concerned with a broad range of spatial scales, from the local (individuals, populations) to the national as well as continental/global level.

Skills of BIOECOS group members

The collective skillset of the BIOECOS group

Contact

Dr. Elina Takola (Group leader) email

Prof. Dr. Martin Volk (Head of Department) email

LinkedIn page of the group

Projects

Current Projects

Population dynamics of agricultural species
Animal movement in shared landscapes
Trade-offs between biodiversity and productivity in human-modified ecosystems
Sustainable landscape management

Former Projects

FLARE - Future Lapwing Responses to Expansions: Model the movement behaviour of northern lapwings (Vanellus vanellus) in an agricultural landscape.
BESTMAP - Behavioural, Ecological and Socio-economic Tools for Modelling Agricultural Policy; Horizon 2020 project funded by the European Commission more information

WAKANAKA: Ermittlung naturschutzbezogener Kriterien in der Umweltprüfung der Bedarfsplanung für Stromnetze und in der Bundesfachplanung zur Erhöhung der Planungssicherheit und Verhinderung von Zielkonflikten

ECOPOTENTIAL: improving future ecosystem benefits through earth observations

TALE - Towards multifunctional agricultural landscapes in Europe: Assessing and governing synergies between food production, biodiversity and ecosystem services

LEGATO: Land-use intensity and Ecological Engineering – Assessment Tools for risks and Opportunities in irrigated rice based production systems
Improving species distribution models of endangered plants in Mexico (completed)

Members

Dr. Elina Takola

Andreas Böhme

Jannatul Ferdous

Leslie Resch

Johanna Esguerra

Elizaveta Shcherbinina

Johannes Dittmann

Former Members

Dr. Michael Beckmann (previous group leader, 2011-2024)

Dr. Tuanjit Sritongchuay (2021-2025)

Can Zhang (2022-2024)

Julián Equihua (2021-2024)

Maximus Anochirim (01.06.2024-31.12.2024)

Olga Kuznetsova (01.09.2024-31.12.2024)

Anne Paulus (2018 - 2024)

Elizaveta Shcherbinina (01.05.2024-31.07.2024)

Sangita Chouhan (01.04.2024-31.07.2024)

Camilla Geiger (01.09.2023-31.12.2023)

Sontje Nier (05.06.2023-14.07.2023)

Tobias Richter (27.02.2023-11.04.2023)

Recent publications

For more information on publications, please visit the personal websites of our members.

Contact

Assistance
Sindy Bleiholder
Phone: +49 341 6025-1250

Nora Pabst
Phone: +49 341 6025-2367

sekces@ufz.de

Open CLE Forum

Link (only for UFZ internal)

CLE-Newsletter 2024 (1.4 MB)

News/Press

Video in the Tagesthemen of the Tagesschau of Jul 28, 2022 (only in German)

Interview with Prof. Ralf Seppelt in the Tagesthemen about the Earth Overshoot Day.

Interview and video on Tagesschau24 of Jul 28, 2022 (only in German)

"All countries live on credit - year after year, humanity consumes more natural resources than the earth can renew. Landscape ecologist Ralf Seppelt explains what today's Earth Overshoot Day says - and what resource conservation can look like."

Video of MigSoKo (only in English)

MigSoKo Animation Video on Environmental Change and Human Migration.

Embedded in the scientific debate about understanding the causalities between environmental change and human migration, this animated video presents key results of the MigSoKo project.

Video of Nov 23, 2021 (only in German)

ARD - Das Erste, "Wissen vor 8. - Natur"

Given the drastic decline of media responses after the publication of the Global Assessment of IPBES in Mai 2019, IPBES and IPCC authors approached ARD and suggested to strengthen reporting on transformative change to fight the biodiversity and climate crisis. Finally we were invited to consult within the new series of „Wissen-vor-8“ on various topics such as zoonoses, agricultural monocultures, invasive species, climate change in the arctic.

Publications

The TALE project wins the BiodivERsA Prize for Excellence and Impact!

This animated movie presents the results of the TALE project (“Towards multifunctional Agricultural Landscapes in Europe”) which investigated the potential conflicts and possible synergies between agricultural services and biodiversity through the development of land use.

Tale Dissemination brochure The brochure (policy brief) "Preserving Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity on agricultural land" has been published and presents the objectives, findings and recommendations of our BiodivERsA project TALE.

download brochure (610.6 KB)

Atlas of Ecosystem Services Atlas of Ecosystem Services: Drivers, Risks, and Societal Responses.

Schröter, M., A. Bonn, S. Klotz, R. Seppelt, C. Baessler (eds., 2019). Springer, New York, 414 pages.

The “Atlas of Ecosystem Services“ contains 60 succinct chapters which deliver a comprehensive overview on the risks to sustained provision of ecosystem services. More than 260 authors, among them UFZ colleagues form 16 departments, have contributed to the book. Global and regional case studies shed light on the impacts of land use change, climate change and socio-economic drivers on ecosystem services, and their related (land use) conflicts. Furthermore, policy instruments and management options to address these risks are presented

Link to Springer (Download)

UFZ Policy Brief

Read book as e-paper

Cover WOCAT-Buch klein The book „Making sense of research for sustainable land management“ was developed in the framework of the GLUES project in cooperation with WOCAT.

Read book as e-paper

download book (16.5 MB)