INPEDIV

The project "Integrative Analysis of the influence of pesticides and land use on biodiversity in Germany" (INPEDIV) is being funded for three years (March 2019 - February 2022) as part of the Leibniz Competition. Under the project management of Dr Livia Schäffler and Prof Wolfgang Wägele (ZFMK), seven partner institutes[1] are working together on an interdisciplinary basis to record the effects of agricultural land use on biodiversity in German protected areas.

In the joint research project, ecological and conventional arable farming are being investigated with regard to their respective influences on neighbouring protected open land habitats. In the Rhineland and in Brandenburg, ten sites each are selected where a protected area borders directly on an agricultural area (five each of organic and conventional farming). Along transects from the field into protected areas, biodiversity at the level of ecological communities (vegetation, soil organisms, insects, birds and small mammals) is recorded and related to a range of possible influencing factors (historical and current land use, landscape structure in the surrounding area, nutrient content of the soil, pesticide residues in soil and plants).

[1] Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig (ZFMK), Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (MfN), Senckenberg Museum für Naturkunde Görlitz (SMNG), Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Entomological Society Krefeld (EVK), and the Universities of Koblenz-Landau and Bonn.