Closing research gaps and creating a scientific basis for marine conservation - these are the goals of the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity. The Institute was officially founded at the University of Oldenburg on Wednesday. The University and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven are thus pooling and expanding their research excellence in this field.
The habitability of our planet is closely linked to the diversity of the animal and plant world - not only on land, but also in the water. How and why is marine biodiversity changing in the face of global change? How does this change affect marine ecosystems and their functions? And how can society adapt or mitigate the consequences? Scientists at the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB) will be investigating these questions in future.
"With the founding of the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity, Oldenburg is developing into an internationally important centre for marine and climate sciences," said Lower Saxony's Science Minister Gabriele Heinen-Kljajić. "The Institute is an example of the successful combination of excellent basic research and social relevance. Oceans are the world's largest and most important ecosystem. For example, they have a significant influence on climate change and are also subject to the effects of climate change."
The state of Lower Saxony is funding the new Institute with up to 23 million euros in the start-up phase until the end of 2020, which will go towards a new institute building, among other things. The city of Oldenburg has provided a plot of land close to the campus in the technology park on Pophankenweg for this purpose. Oldenburg's Lord Mayor Jürgen Krogmann explained: "As a city, we have been committed to supporting and closely monitoring the process of establishing the institute from the very beginning. Particularly when it came to the issue of the land, we quickly made it clear that we were committed to making this establishment possible. This is an important milestone for Oldenburg as a centre of science and a success for decades of work by marine researchers.
Following the start-up phase, the Helmholtz Association will take over the Institute's basic funding of around 5.5 million euros per year from 2021 - 90 per cent of which will come from federal funds and 10 per cent from funds from the state of Lower Saxony.
"If we want to understand how an ecosystem functions, we need to study not only the diversity of species and their function, but also the role of humans in the marine environment," emphasised AWI Director Prof Dr Karin Lochte. "In many cases, the question today is no longer whether we use the seas and oceans, but how we use them." In order to find answers to this question, the new Helmholtz Institute combines the expertise of natural and social scientists. This is the only way to develop modern concepts for the sustainable use of the oceans, says Lochte.
Scientists from the AWI and the University of Oldenburg have been cooperating successfully in numerous projects for a long time. The new Institute will now enable them to jointly research key aspects of biological diversity - from the genetics of individual marine animals, algae and bacteria to functional analyses of entire ecosystems.
Every change in the sea has direct consequences for humans: Among other things, it provides food and raw materials, influences air quality and the global climate, breaks down pollutants and serves as a place for recreation and tourism, emphasised University President Prof. Dr Dr Hans Michael Piper, adding: "Laying a scientific foundation for marine conservation and marine ecosystem management is an immensely important and urgent task - and at the same time a logical expansion of the internationally renowned biodiversity and marine research in Oldenburg."
In order to develop innovative nature conservation and management strategies, the HIFMB is focussing on an integrative research approach. This is intended to combine a natural science basis for conservation concepts with social science expertise in the analysis of social and political processes. Against this background, new scientific working groups on "Marine Conservation" and "Marine Governance" are being established at the Helmholtz Institute. Another new professorship for biodiversity informatics will pursue the integration of "big data" in marine conservation, i.e. making better use of the increasing amount of available data on biodiversity for the benefit of marine ecosystems. Finally, in order to better explain influences on biodiversity, the new professorship for Biodiversity Theory aims to link classic theoretical models of ecology with spatial, evolutionary and biogeochemical approaches.
"These four new professorships close research gaps on the one hand and form important hinges between the existing expertise in marine biodiversity research on the other," says HIFMB founding director Prof Dr Helmut Hillebrand. "We are therefore endeavouring to appoint outstanding international experts to all working groups." The positions will be advertised in autumn.
For the time being, a total of eleven existing working groups from the University of Oldenburg and the AWI are cooperating in the institute, six of them from the Institute of Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM) and the Institute of Biology and Environmental Sciences (IBU) at the university and five from the AWI. The Helmholtz Institute is currently recruiting the scientific staff for the first integrative research projects in Oldenburg. Under the aegis of HIFMB Director Hillebrand, the marine researchers will initially work in rented premises in the immediate vicinity of the Wechloy campus, which is characterised by the natural sciences, before the planned new institute building on Pophankenweg is realised in 2022.