Description: The field of ecoinformatics provides concepts, methods and standards to guide management and analysis of ecological data with particular emphasis on exploration of co-occurrences of organisms and their linkage to environmental conditions and taxon attributes. In this editorial, introducing the Special Feature ‘Ecoinformatics and global change’, we reflect on the development of ecoinformatics and explore its importance for future global change research with special focus on vegetation-plot data. We show how papers in this Special Feature illustrate important directions and approaches in this emerging field. We suggest that ecoinformatics has the potential to make profound contributions to pure and applied sciences, and that the analyses, databases, meta-databases, data exchange formats and analytical tools presented in this Special Feature advance this approach to vegetation science and illustrate and address important open questions. We conclude by describing important future directions for the development of the field including incentives for data sharing, creation of tools for more robust statistical analysis, utilities for integration of data that conform to divergent taxonomic standards, and databases that provide detailed plot-specific data so as to allow users to find and access data appropriate to their research needs.

Description: Questions: What are the most likely environmental drivers for compositional herb layer changes as indicated by trait differences between winner and loser species? Location: Weser-Elbe region (NW Germany). Methods: We resurveyed the herb layer communities of ancient forest patches on base-rich sites of 175 semi-permanent plots. Species traits were tested for their ability to discriminate between winner and loser species using logistic regression analyses and deviance partitioning. Results: Of 115 species tested, 31 were identified as winner species and 30 as loser species. Winner species had higher seed longevity, flowered later in the season and more often had an oceanic distribution compared to loser species. Loser species tended to have a higher specific leaf area, were more susceptible to deer browsing and had a performance optimum at higher soil pH compared to winner species. The loser species also represented several ancient forest and threatened species. Deviance partitioning indicated that local drivers (i.e. disturbance due to forest management) were primarily responsible for the species shifts, while regional drivers (i.e. browsing pressure and acidification from atmospheric deposition) and global drivers (i.e. climate warming) had moderate effects. There was no evidence that canopy closure, drainage or eutrophication contributed to herb layer changes. Conclusions: The relative importance of the different drivers as indicated by the winner and loser species differs from that found in previous long-term studies. Relating species traits to species performance is a valuable tool that provides insight into the environmental drivers that are most likely responsible for herb layer changes.

Description: Tropical forests are biologically diverse ecosystems that play important roles in the carbon cycle and maintenance of global biodiversity. Understanding how tropical forests respond to environmental changes is important, as changes in carbon storage can modulate the rate and magnitude of climate change. Applying an ecoinformatics approach for managing long-term forest inventory plot data, where individual trees are tracked over time, facilitates regional and cross-continental forest research to evaluate changes in taxonomic composition, growth, recruitment and mortality rates, and carbon and biomass stocks. We developed ForestPlots.net as a secure, online inventory data repository and to facilitate data management of long-term tropical forest plots to promote scientific collaborations among independent researchers. The key novel features of the database are: (a) a design that efficiently deals with time-series data; (b) data management tools to assess potential errors; and (c) a query library to generate outputs (e.g. biomass and carbon stock changes over time).

Description: Itinerary and summary On 20 April 2011 Polarstern started its Atlantic transfer from Cape Town to Bremerhaven as last leg of Antarctic cruise ANT-XXVII/4. The cruise was utilized for continuous investigations of atmospheric and marine properties as well as for energy and material fluxes between ocean and atmosphere. The cruise ended in Bremerhaven on 20 May 2011 after a short stop in Las Palmas. The following projects were carried out: 3.1 Autonomous measurement platforms for energy and material exchange between ocean and atmosphere (OCEANET - Atmosphere & Ocean) In order to provide a solid basis for the observational monitoring of energy and material exchange between ocean and atmosphere it is planned to develop an autonomous observation system for operational use onboard cargo- and research vessels. The project is based on a network of expertise between IFM-GEOMAR (CO2-/O2-fluxes, photosynthetic status, energy budget, remote sensing), IfT (lidar measurements), the GKSS research center (ferry box, remote sensing of marine biology with ENVISAT/ MERIS) and AWI-Bremerhaven (CO2-system, marine infrastructure of Polarstern). 3.2 Chemical and physical characterization of marine aerosols on board Polarstern Exchange of gases and aerosol particles between ocean and atmosphere is not well understood currently, although it has received considerably and intensively attention. New measurements were carried out here using a LIDAR system to understand the formation mechanism of secondary fraction in marine aerosols particles and to characterize the optical properties of marine aerosols. 3.3 Aerosols measurements using MICROTOPS In addition to the LIDAR aerosol measurements, optical thickness densities of aerosols were measured by using the MICOROTOPS. 3.4 Rate measurement of cosmic particles in dependence on latitude and weather conditions Continuous rate measurements of cosmic particles allow estimating their dependency on latitude due to the earth’s magnetic field. Simultaneous cloud observations allow investigating whether the concentration of cosmic particles influences cloudiness or vice versa.

Description: ...Diese Dissertation untersucht Klima induzierte Veränderungen der Meeresoberflächeneigenschaften, Eis-Rafting Ereignisse und den äolischen Eintrag organischen Materials in den Nordatlantik während der letzten 4 Ma. Zu diesem Zweck werden Veränderungen in der organischen, geochemischen und mineralogischen Zusammensetzung mariner Sedimente der Integrated Ocean Drilling Project (IODP) Expedition 306 Site U1313 untersucht. Site U1313, eine Nachbohrung der Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) Site 607, liegt im Nordatlantik (41ʿ N; 32,57ʿ W) an einer der klimatisch sensibelsten Positionen der Welt. Das Hauptziel dieser Doktorarbeit besteht in der Rekonstruktion der langfristigen Entwicklung von Klimavariabilitäten im Nordatlantik, um zu einem besseren Verständnis der noch weitgehend unbekannten Mechanismen, die den quartären Klimawandel bestimmten, beizutragen...