Sensor network in the forest to improve forecasts of climate change impacts

The German Research Foundation approves the Collaborative Research Center "ECOSENSE". The German Research Foundation (DFG) will fund the Collaborative Research Center CRC 1537 "ECOSENSE" from July 1, 2022. The SFB will receive about 10.5 million euros over four years for its interdisciplinary, detailed research on ecosystem processes in forests. The team led by CRC spokespersons Ulrike Wallrabe , Professor of Microactuators at the Institute of Microsystems Engineering, and Christiane Werner , Professor of Ecosystem Physiology at the Institute of Institute of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Freiburg, would like to be able to more precisely and quickly detect and predict critical changes in the forest ecosystem - which are occurring as a result of climate change. Sensor network sends measurement data to database in real time. To do so, the CRC is developing an autonomous, intelligent sensor network based on novel microsensors. Tailored to harsh forest environments, these will measure the spatio-temporal dynamics of ecosystem states and fluxes in a natural, complex-structured forest in a minimally invasive manner.