Geoecosystems and Landscape Climate – The Approach to Biodiversity on Landscape Scale

Abstract

In this article biodiversity is discussed from a geoecological point of view. Geoecology, a subdivision of landscape ecology, deals with the mass-energy budget of an environmental system (“geoecosystem”) in landscape scale dimensions. As an introduction same of the main principles and approaches are reviewed. Within the Coordinated Project Biodiversity, the geoecological studies examine the role of environmental heterogeneity which mainly depends on the impact of abiotic ecosystem factors, as a driving force for triggering and maintaining biological diversity. Thereby special emphasis is put on soil–plant relationships. Soils on the steep slopes of the Jurassic mountains have formed in parent material made up of three different quaternary periglacial deposits. This presence of lithological discontinuities accounts for the high spatial variability of soil physical and chemical properties, entailing a scale-dependency of soil–plant interactions. First results from the test site Nenzlinger Weide seem to indicate that small-scale patterns of plant species distribution are mainly controlled by biologieal interactions whereas large-scale patterns are greatly influenced by changing soil properties. Nitrogen was found to be the most sensitive element. Finally first steps are outlined onto a regional analysis of landscape diversity using soil respiration as an indicator.