LT(S)ER: Open air laboratory Matsch/Mazia

Global Change phenomena as land use change and temperature increase are well proved to have significant impacts on biodiversity, water budget and ecosystem functioning of mountain regions. However, many studies act as isolated investigations within a complex, multidimensional space and are thus limited in their significance. Hence, it is rather essential to combine a broad set of ecological investigation methods in order to obtain an integrated comprehension of the highly interlinked ecological processes in such vulnerable ecosystems.
Within this project an interdisciplinary approach is followed, where ecological measurements, manipulative experiments and modeling activities are strongly linked together in order to quantify land use and climatic change Impacts on an inner-alpine catchment. All activities are aimed to cover both the spatial Dimension from plot to landscape scale as well as the temporal component considering past, present and
future.
In order to put activities and results in a more international context, an integration of the research area in Matsch/Mazia within the LTER-network is planned. Fruthermore, soil moisture measurement will act as calibrating and validating data for the NASA SMAP-Mission.