Lecture prepared with Helge Bruelheide (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany).
Abstract
In Germany (Central Europe) biodiversity has changed profoundly with respect to composition and spatial extent of ecosystems because of a multitude of environmental change drivers and a high human impact. Nevertheless, existing monitoring programmes in Germany only cover the last two decades and lack data, coverage and integration. The project "sMon - Analysing trends in German species data" initiated by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig has the aim to mobilize data from different sources to derive biodiversity trends. The data used comprise very different spatial and temporal grains, ranging from vegetation plot time series on a very few metres squared to grid cell mapping of whole Germany. The different types of data have a poor temporal or spatial coverage, but can provide important information on biodiversity change which goes beyond current programmes. The analysis at the coarse scale of 100km2-grid cells revealed losses in frequency of about 70% of all plant species in Germany. The spatial patterns in losses and gains differed between native species, archaeophytes and neophytes.
