Skalenproblematik in der Ökosystem-Modellierung von Agrarlandschaften

• Applicant: Dr. Christoph Alt
• Subject Area: Plant Cultivation, Plant Nutrition, Agricultural Technology
• Term: from 2000 to 2002
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5244058

Whereas crop management occurs on the field level for political decision making is the region. The overall objektive of this project is to understand ecological systems (particularly agroecosystems) and their reaction on management at multiple spatial scales. Specifically, this project aims at determining the "representativeness" of site specific data within a region, and at a more detailed understanding of the effects of different levels and methods of spatial aggregation on both data and models. It is hypothesized that the predictablility of patterns varies in a systematic way with the resolution of ecological processes, and this relationship can be used to find the optimal resolution. This hypothesis will be evaluated using a geographic and time series database for the Patuxent River watershed in Maryland, and the development of a multi-scale, modular modeling environment to integrate site-specific information with regional surveys, GIS, and remote sensing data. The Patuxent Landscape Model (PLM) is a process-based, spatially explicit, dynamic simulation tool for landscape processes under various cimatic, economic and policy scenario. Scaling experiments with the PLM are aimed to test new methods of aggregation and the "optimal" resolution for particular questions.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships