Institut für Pflanzenbau und Bodenkunde
The project is intended to help forests fulfill their function as carbon storage and for CO2 binding. Global climate changes pose dramatic challenges to our forest ecosystems. Negative effects, such as the current dieback of spruce trees in the Harz region or the major problems with native beech trees, are impressive examples. Natural adaptations of our forests to changing conditions occur extremely slowly, sometimes over centuries. Our forests in particular are an extremely important CO2 store. In order to enable the sustainable management of these ecosystems in the long term, it is of great importance that the individual plants have a high level of resistance/tolerance and thus that the entire forest has good resilience to abiotic and biotic stress factors. Sulfur (S) is of particular importance as a macroelement, as even a slight deficiency, which does not have any visible effects on growth, can significantly reduce stress resistance/tolerance under unfavorable conditions. Research in the area of stress tolerance is intended to develop preventative measures to avoid and manage large-scale damaging events in forests, which should result in practical recommendations for action for foresters. These recommendations for action should then be implemented practically with future users and supported scientifically.
Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture
