Participant ID: 2 - Max-Planck-Institute of Biogeochemistry
	http://www.bgc-jena.mpg.de/

Expertise and experience The Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry (MPI-BGC) is a new research institute of the German Max-Planck Society, founded in 1997. Its research mission is the investigation of the global biogeochemical cycles and their interaction with the climate system. The institute combines strong observational and process-based studies (soil carbon, plant community structure, nutrition and growth, vegetation-atmosphere fluxes, convective boundary layer) with global scale modelling (e.g. vegetation dynamics, global carbon cycle, aerosol modelling). The institute currently has a scientific and technical staff of more than 100 people. Besides the renowned directors Profs. Schulze and Heimann, a number of excellent and experienced scientists are working the MPI-BGC on biogeochemical cycles at process-level (e.g., Dr. G. Gleixner), site level (e.g., PD Dr. W. Kutsch), regional and global scale (e.g., Dr. C. Gerbig, Dr. C. Roedenbeck, Dr. G. Churkina), providing an extraordinary research environment for the proposed project. By 2006 three Independent Junior Research Groups on vegetation and ecosystem modeling will have been established, each one lead by Dr. C. Wirth (biodiversity and ecosystem function), Dr. A. Kleidon (thermodynamic modelling), and Dr. M. Reichstein (ecosystem model-data integration).
The MPI-BGC is one of the pivotal European biogeochemical cycle research institutions, and as such is co-ordinating the EU-funded CARBOEUROPE-IP project, and within the project the "Continental Integration" component. Moreover the Institute is strongly involved in the recently EU-funded NITROEUROPE project. The institute was involved in 12 of the 15 previous CarboEurope projects, and co-ordinated three of them. MPI-BGC currently hosts the European scientific office of CarboEurope and has proven skills in co-ordination of international projects. MPI-BGC regularly advised policy makers and has frequent contacts with media and the broad public. Role in this project WP1: Mongu tower site: Monitoring water, CO2 and energy exchanges Miombo woodland; monitoring climate, soil moisture and temperature at the Mongu tower site; development and provision of standardized eddy covariance and other flux data processing (gap-filling, flux-partitioning, uncertainties) tools, extraction, processing (QC, gap-filling) and syntheisising of MODIS remote sensing product, publications. WP2: Workpackage leader: development of a methodological manual for standard site characterization; organisation of joined field campaigns at strategic sites conducting field campaigns on leaf photosynthetic capacities, stomatal conductance, total and heterotrophic soil respiration, above- and belowground plant growth, litterfall and fine root turnover at the strategic sites for process analysis; data analysis, bottom-up modelling of processes; publications. WP3: Workpackage leader; development of model inversion tools, data-model model-data fusion of remote sensing and tower flux data with LPJ-C and MOD17+ model. synthesis of existing and ongoing carbon and water cycle observations in relation to climate and vegetation type; regional to contiental modelling of CO2 flux components using MOD17+ and LPJ, publications. WP5: Contribute to training modules on carbon-related issues at African Universities during field campaigns. Principal Investigator and collaborators Markus Reichstein, PI, co-ordinator of WP3 is appointed as Independent Junior Research Group Leader at the MPI-BGC. Graduated in Landscape Ecology, University of Münster, Germany. PhD in Plant and Ecosystem Ecology, University of Bayreuth, Germany, on the interpretation and modeling of Mediterranean eddy covariance carbon and water fluxes in response to drought. M.R. has then seen strongly involved in EU-Projects VOCAMOD, MEDEFLU (FP4), CARBOEUROFLUX, MIND (FP5) and CARBOEUROPE-IP Ecosystem and Integration components (FP6) and was modelling workpackage coordinator of MIND. In 2004, he started the Intra-European Marie-Curie project INTERMODE in the Department of Forest Ecology at the University of Viterbo. Within these projects he developed expertise in the processing and synthesis of eddy covariance carbon and water flux as well as soil respiration data, robust ecosystem model-data integration techniques and diagnostic ecosystem modeling using remote sensing information. In this context he coordinated the ecosystem flux and remote sensing data harmonization and interpretation for the analysis of the European 2003 heatwave (Ciais e al. 2005). Further, in co-operation with the University of Montana and the PIK-Potsdam, the applicant is currently organising the evaluation of global ecosystem productivity products coming from the MODIS-satellite driven model and the dynamic LPJ model at European flux-tower sites. This activity additionally is embedded into a broader activity for the Global Terrestrial Observation System (GTOS) at the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), where the candidate was appointed to co-ordinate the 'Evaluation of Remote Sensing and In-situ Data Sets for Carbon Accounting for the Ecosystem Productivity Project of GTOS'. Werner Kutsch, Co-PI co-ordinator of WP2, is scientist at the MPI-BGC. He was sub-project coordinator during the nationally funded project 'Ecosystem Research in the Bornhöved Lake District' (1988-1999) at the University of Kiel and PI of several research projects funded by the DFG thereafter. From 2003 - 2004 he joined the international working group running the flux tower Skukuza, South Africa and worked on eddy covariance, leaf level gas exchange and soil respiration. At the MPI-BGI he is now responsible for the flux towers of the Jena Cluster within CarboEurope-IP. He is chair of the programme 'The Role of Soils in the Terrestrial Carbon Balance' by the European Science Foundation. Christian Beer, scientist, graduated in Mathematics and Chemistry at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, and obtained his PhD in Geography with a thesis on linking and constraining soil and vegetation process modelling with remote sensing in the EU funded project Siberia II. He is a designated expert of the Dynamic Global Vegetation model LPJ. Example publications