TY - GEN A1 - Ulrich, Werner A1 - Piwczynski, Marcin A1 - Zaplata, Markus Klemens A1 - Winter, Susanne A1 - Schaaf, Wolfgang A1 - Fischer, Anton T1 - Soil conditions and phylogenetic relatedness influence total community trait space during early plant succession T2 - Journal of Plant Ecology N2 - The total space of traits covered by the members of plant communities is an important parameter of ecosystem functioning and complexity. We trace the variability of trait space during early plant succession and ask how trait space co-varies with phylogenetic community structure and soil conditions. Particularly, we are interested in the small-scale variability in trait space and the influence of biotic and abiotic filters. We use data on species richness and soil conditions from the first 7 years of initial succession of an artificial catchment in north-eastern Germany. Total functional attribute diversity serves as a proxy to total trait space. Total trait space steadily increased during succession. We observed high small-scale variability in total trait space that was positively correlated with species richness and phylogenetic segregation and negatively correlated with total plant cover. Trait space increased with soil carbonate content, while pH and the fraction of sandy material behaved indifferently. Our results indicate that during early succession, habitat filtering processes gain importance leading to a lesser increase in trait space than expected from the increase in species richness alone. Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/jpe/rtt048 VL - 7 IS - 4 SP - 321 EP - 329 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Schaaf, Wolfgang A1 - Elmer, Michael A1 - Fischer, Anton A1 - Gerwin, Werner A1 - Nenov, Rossen A1 - Pretzsch, Hans A1 - Seifert, Stefan A1 - Winter, Susanne A1 - Zaplata, Markus Klemens T1 - Monitoring the formation of structures and patterns during initial development of an artificial catchment T2 - Environmental Monitoring and Assessment N2 - The objective of this paper is to present observations, results from monitoring measurements, and preliminary conclusions about the development of patterns and structures during the first 5 years of development of an artificial catchment starting from point zero. We discuss the high relevance of initial system traits and external events for the system development and draw conclusions for further research. These investigations as part of a Collaborative Research Center, aim to disentangle and understand the feedback mechanisms and interrelationships of processes and their co-development with spatial and temporal structures and patterns by studying an initial, probably less complex ecosystem. Therefore, intensive measurements were carried out in the catchment with regard to the development of surface structures, hydrological patterns, vegetation dynamics, water chemistry, and element budgets. During the first 5 years, considerable changes within the catchment were observed. Both internal and external factors could be identified as driving forces for the formation of structures and patterns in the artificial catchment. Initial structures formed by the construction process and initial substrate characteristics were decisive for the distribution and flow of water. External factors like episodic events triggered erosion and dissection during this initial phase, promoted by the low vegetation cover, and the unconsolidated sandy substrate. The transformation of the initial geosystem into areas with evolving terrestrial or aquatic characteristics and from a very episodic to a more permanent stream network and discharge, together with the observed vegetation dynamics increased site diversity and heterogeneity with respect to water and nutrient availability and transformation processes compared with the more homogenous conditions at point zero. The processes and feedback mechanisms in the initial development of a new landscape may deviate in rates, intensity, and dominance from those known from mature ecosystems. It is therefore crucial to understand these early phases of ecosystem development and to disentangle the increasingly complex interactions between the evolving terrestrial and aquatic, biotic, and abiotic compartments of the system. Long-term monitoring of initial ecosystems may provide important data and parameters on processes and the crucial role of spatial and temporal structures and patterns to solve these problems. Artificially created catchments could be a suitable tool to study these initial developments at the landscape scale under known, designed, and defined boundary conditions. KW - ecosystem development Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-012-2998-x SN - 0167-6369 VL - Vol. 185 IS - 7 SP - 5965 EP - 5986 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Winter, Susanne A1 - Zaplata, Markus Klemens A1 - Rzanny, Michael A1 - Schaaf, Wolfgang A1 - Fischer, Anton A1 - Ulrich, Werner T1 - Increasing ecological multifunctionality during early plant succession T2 - Plant Ecology N2 - Ecological multifunctionality quantifies the functional performance of various important plant traits and increases with growing structural habitat heterogeneity, number of plant functional traits, and species richness. However, the successional changes in multifunctionality have not been traced so far. We use quantitative plant samples of 1 m2 plots from the first 6 years of initial vegetation dynamics in a German created catchment to infer the temporal changes in plant functional trait space and multifunctionality. Multifunctionality at the plot level was in all study years lower than expected from a random sample of the local pool of potential colonizers and was lowest at intermediate states of succession. In each year species containing a specific set of traits occurred with limited but focused functionality. The observed average low degree of multifunctionality contrasts with recent models predicting a tendency towards maximum multifunctionality during plant community development. However, variability in multifunctionality among plots increased during succession and the respective multifunctionality distribution among plots was increasingly right skewed indicating an excess of plots with relatively high multifunctionality. This relative excess of plots with high multifunctionality might act as an important trigger of community development paving the way for new species and functions to become established. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-019-00930-3 SN - 1573-5052 VL - 220 IS - 4-5 SP - 499 EP - 509 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Schaaf, Wolfgang A1 - Elmer, Michael A1 - Gerwin, Werner A1 - Fischer, Anton A1 - Zaplata, Markus Klemens A1 - Nenov, Rossen T1 - Feedbacks between structures and processes during initial ecosystem development in an artificial catchment T2 - European Geosciences Union, General Assembly 2013, Vienna, Austria, 07 – 12 April 2013 N2 - We studied the role of strutures and processes and their feedbacks during initial ecosystem development in the artificial catchment Chicken Creek. During the first seven years, considerable changes within the catchment were observed. Both internal and external factors could be identified as driving forces for the formation of structures and patterns in the artificial catchment. Initial structures formed by the construction process and initial substrate characteristics were decisive for the distribution and flow of water. External factors like episodic events triggered erosion and dissection during this initial phase, promoted by the low vegetation cover and the unconsolidated sandy substrate. The transformation of the initial geo-system into areas with evolving terrestrial or aquatic characteristics and from a very episodic to a more permanent stream network and discharge, together with the observed vegetation dynamics increased site diversity and heterogeneity with respect to water and nutrient availability and transformation processes compared to the more homogenous conditions at point zero. The processes and feedback mechanisms in the initial development of a new landscape may deviate in rates, intensity and dominance from those known from mature ecosystems. It is therefore crucial to understand these early phases of ecosystem development and to disentangle the increasingly complex interactions between the evolving terrestrial and aquatic, biotic and abiotic compartments of the system. Artificially created catchments could be a suitable tool to study these initial developments at the landscape scale under known, designed and defined boundary conditions. Y1 - 2013 UR - http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2013/EGU2013-6837.pdf N1 - EGU2013-6837 PB - European Geophysical Society CY - Katlenburg-Lindau ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Zaplata, Markus Klemens A1 - Kollmann, Johannes A1 - Ulrich, Werner A1 - Winter, Susanne A1 - Schaaf, Wolfgang A1 - Elmer, Michael A1 - Gerwin, Werner A1 - Fischer, Anton ED - Jeltsch, Florian ED - Joshi, Jasmin T1 - Cover balance or degree of autocorrelation? It is the same and integratively traces pattern formation during succession T2 - GfÖ 43rd Annual Meeting, Building bridges in ecology, linking systems, scales and disciplines, September 9 to 13, 2013, Potsdam, Germany N2 - It is widely acknowledged that increasing complexity is a key attribute of ecosystem genesis. This is particularly true for primary succession on homogeneous substrates. However, a mechanistic understanding of spatial colonisation and pattern formation during primary succession has not been achieved yet. Thus, we studied this topic for 7 years within an experimental catchment (6 ha) established in the post-mining landscape of eastern Germany. Equidistant permanent plots (120 plots à 25m²) allowed for autocorrelation analyses, and thus tracing the spatial development of species cover performance. For each species tested, the “cover balance” first increased due to colonization, while decreasing in the course of succession. Drawing a benefit from these temporal trends, we suggested cover balance levels revealed by autocorrelation analyses to best indicate well-defined phases in primary succession at spatial entities. Hence, with the help of this spatial approach, terrestrial succession can be understood now much better at the most general level of the hierarchy provided by Pickett et al. (1987). In accordance with these authors, at subordinated levels of the causal hierarchy differential species performance might get collectively explained by contributing processes or conditions, such as ecophysiological traits, life history strategies, competition and allelopathy of the occurring plant species. Further research is needed to understand their relative contributions to the pattern formation. Y1 - 2013 UR - http://www.gfoe-2013.de/download/130905_GFOe_2013_Abstracts.small.pdf SP - 228 EP - 229 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Zaplata, Markus Klemens A1 - Fischer, A. A1 - Winter, S. A1 - Schaaf, Wolfgang A1 - Veste, Maik ED - Holzheu, Stefan ED - Thies, B. T1 - Development of an initial ecosystem - II. Vegetation dynamics and soil pattern in an artificial water catchment in Lusatia, NE Germany T2 - GfÖ 2009: Dimensions of ecology - From global change to molecular ecology Y1 - 2009 SP - S. 124 PB - Bayreuther Zentrum für Ökologie und Umweltforschung (BayCEER) Selbstverlag CY - Bayreuth ER - TY - GEN A1 - Oleynik, Paul A1 - Berkmann, Fritz A1 - Reiter, Sebastian A1 - Schlipf, Jon A1 - Ratzke, Markus A1 - Yamamoto, Yuji A1 - Fischer, Inga Anita T1 - Strong Optical Coupling of Lattice Resonances in a Top-down Fabricated Hybrid Metal–Dielectric Al/Si/Ge Metasurface T2 - Nano Letters N2 - Optical metasurfaces enable the manipulation of the light–matter interaction in ultrathin layers. Compared with their metal or dielectric counterparts, hybrid metasurfaces resulting from the combination of dielectric and metallic nanostructures can offer increased possibilities for interactions between modes present in the system. Here, we investigate the interaction between lattice resonances in a hybrid metal–dielectric metasurface obtained from a single-step nanofabrication process. Finite-difference time domain simulations show the avoided crossing of the modes appearing in the wavelength-dependent absorptance inside the Ge upon variations in a selected geometry parameter as evidence for strong optical coupling. We find good agreement between the measured and simulated absorptance and reflectance spectra. Our metasurface design can be easily incorporated into a top-down optoelectronic device fabrication process with possible applications ranging from on-chip spectroscopy to sensing. KW - metamaterials KW - semiconductors KW - hybridization KW - optoelectronics Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c05050 SN - 1530-6984 SN - 1530-6992 VL - 24 IS - 10 SP - 3142 EP - 3149 ER -