October 2014: Young academics selected for mentoring program
Marieke van der Maaten-Theunissen and Jelena Lange have successfully applied for the next turn of Greifswald University‘s mentoring program for female postdocs resp. PhD students. The program aims at supporting young women at the beginning of their scientific or business career for a time period of two years resp. 15 months. The one-to-one mentoring relation will be complemented by special trainings and networking events.
The initative is part of a joint project („KarriereWegeMentoring“) and is supported by the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern as well as the European Social Fund.
September 2014: Third phase of DAAD program INTENSE has started!
As of September 2014, the INTENSE program is again financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Sciences. Students of the study program BSc Landscape Ecology and Nature Conservation – International have the possibility to receive a DAAD mobility grant for the Bachelor Plus year abroad. This will be possible at least until winter term 2015/16. At present (winter term 2014/15) seven students are studying abroad via INTENSE.
August, 27th 2014: Poster prize for Ernst van der Maaten
Ernst van der Maaten won a poster prize for his study "Species distribution models can predict temporal but not spatial variation in forest growth". The prize was awarded at the COST Strategic Event "A scientific roadmap for projections of global change impacts on forests" (Sarajevo, 27-28 August). In cooperation with scientists from the University of Alberta (Canada) and Wageningen University and Research Centre (the Netherlands), Ernst developed SDMs for major tree species in Europe, and validated the realism and relevance of these models against a large-scale tree-ring network.
August 2014: Field work in Finland
Jelena Lange, Roberto Cruz García and Martin Wilmking worked one week in northern Finland. Together with Risto Jalkanen from the national Finish forest research institute METLA they took samples for wood anatomy, wood density profiles and annual ring width to search for answers regarding the question of a circumpolar divergence effect between tree growth and climate drivers.
Lehrstuhl für Landschaftsökologie
May 1st, 2014: new colleague
We welcome Jelena Lange as a new PhD student in our group. For the next three years, she will be working on the DFG-funded research project "New potential of old proxies: Using wood anatomy to unravel the complex interplay of tree growth and climate in boreal forests”.
April, 28th 2014: Publication in Global Change Biology
Our Working Group Landscape Ecology and Ecosystem Dynamics has recently contributed data from Finland and Russia to a new global study on methane emissions, published in the internationally renowned journal Global Change Biology. This study was now highlithed on Science Daily (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140428121353.htm).
March 31st, 2014: Interview in NDR Nordmagazin
Prof. Martin Wilmking gave an interview for NDR and spoke about "climate change in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern" on 31st of March in NDR Nordmagazin.
March 29th, 2014: Tree planting campaign “Ein Baum für meine Uni”
On March 29th, a major tree-planting campaign of the fundraising project "Ein Baum für meine Uni" (“A tree for my university”) took place in the arboretum of the University of Greifswald. In total, 13 standard fruit trees were planted of various old varieties. The local newspaper ‘Ostsee Zeitung’ reported on the tree-planting campaign on March 31st.
March 2014: visiting researchers at the dendrolab
The dendroecological laboratory “DendroGreif” welcomes various international visiting researchers in spring 2014.
Dr. Andrea Hevia, research associate at the CETEMAS-Forest and Wood Technology Centre in Asturias (Spain), will study elemental compositions in tree rings of different species using the high-resolution X-ray fluorescence ITRAX multiscanner. More specifically, she will investigate whether elemental abundances differ over time in different stem heights and expositions. The work will contribute to a uniform measurement protocol for future dendrochemical studies. Andrea visits “DendroGreif” from March till June.
Dr. Ryszard J. Kaczka, researcher at the University of Silesia (Poland), performs measurement on the ITRAX multiscanner as well. The objective of his study is to investigate how the recently proposed “blue reflectance” proxy for wood density compares to X-ray based wood density measurements. In these analyses, Ryszard focuses on various coniferous tree species.
The Portuguese scholar Adriana Silva is visiting “DendroGreif” in the course of a research project focusing on late frost sensitivity and recovery of European beech in Bavaria. In the project, which is done in cooperation with Bayreuth University (PD Dr. Jürgen Kreyling), Adriana combines remote sensing techniques with tree-ring analyses.
Finally, we welcome Dr. Marina Gurskaya from the Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology in Yekaterinburg (Russia), who visits our institute on a regular basis. Marina will work in the dendrolab and will support the preparation of field campaigns in Russia (Era-Net Treeline Project).
March 2014: new DFG-Project
The German Science Council (DFG) funded a new project under the titel "New potential of old proxies: Using wood anatomy to unravel the complex interplay of tree growth and climate in boreal forests".
The project states the question, why certain tree species in Alaska and northern Siberia show reduced growth with recent warming trends, using a multi-proxy approach (tree-ring width, density, wood anatomy).