From microscopic water organisms to entire forest landscapes, researchers at TUM are harnessing cutting-edge technologies to investigate how biodiversity is affected by climate change - and how ecosystems can be protected more effectively.
Peter Neusser / TUM Rupert Seidl strikes out along a path that runs first through a mountain pasture, then climbs through spruce forests. He is guiding forest science students through a unique outdoor laboratory: Berchtesgaden National Park in Bavaria, Germany. The group stops at a patch of dead spruce trees. The trees have been killed by bark beetles. New vegetation is springing up between their bare trunks. The next stop is a few hundred meters farther. Over thirty years ago, severe windstorm Wiebke cleared a swath down this forest slope. Now young spruce, sycamore, and occasional birch trees have crowded into the opening created by the storm, some reaching up to three meters high.
In the core zone of the national park, nature is left to its own devices without human intervention in biological processes. The entire park thus becomes a place of learning. As Rupert Seidl explains: "We can trace the impact of pests, drought, and storms down to the level of individual trees. And we can track the development of the forest when human activity is removed from the equation over ten, twenty, or thirty years."
Astrid Eckert / TUM Seidl, Professor of Ecosystem Dynamics and Forest Management in Mountain Landscapes , holds lectures and conducts research at the TUM School of Life Sciences in Weihenstephan. He also heads the research and monitoring unit at Berchtesgaden National Park. "Forests are actually incredibly resilient. Trees constantly die and are replaced by new ones as part of the natural cycle," says Seidl. "However, what is concerning is the extent and speed at which forest fires, storms, and bark beetle infestations are changing our forests, driven by humaninduced climate change."
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) warns of an unprecedented decline in biodiversity, with around one million species believed to be threatened by extinction. Human activity has already significantly altered three-quarters of the earth's land mass and two-thirds of its marine areas. This development is exacerbated by global warming, which is causing habitat loss for many species, placing wildlife under additional pressure.
Local mechanisms, global patterns
To better understand these global changes and their consequences, researchers at the TUM School of Life Sciences are investigating various aspects of biodiversity, from forests and freshwater ecosystems to agricultural and urban areas. They are also developing strategies for protection and sustainable use of ecosystems, and contributing their findings to the dialogue with professionals, policymakers, and society.
These activities bring together two complementary perspectives. Using satellite data, remote sensing, and ecological models, researchers map patterns from individual ecosystems to landscapes and even continents. At the same time, they delve into the mechanisms behind those patterns, analyzing interactions between organisms, nutrient cycles, and processes at the molecular and genetic level. Sensors, environmental DNA analyses, and floating robots capture data which are then pooled in AI models developed by the School and designed for the observation and prediction of biodiversity and ecosystem resilience.
Astrid Eckert / TUM An example of their research was a study published in the academic journal Science in 2026, in which Rupert Seidl and colleagues projected a significant rise in forest dieback in Europe, caused by wildfires, storms, and bark beetle infestations. Climate warming by approximately 4 °C could more than double the areas affected by dieback by the year 2100, compared to the period 1986 to 2020. The scientists warn that even temperatures rising by around 2 °C are likely to increase damage to forests compared to the earlier period.
"These changes will cause a decline in closed old-growth forests and increase the amount of young, open woodland," predicts Seidl. Plants and animals that depend on dead wood and older trees will lose their habitat, while light-loving and warm-adapted species will benefit. The study was based on an AI-assisted simulation model drawing on 135 million data points from 13,000 forest locations in Europe, with additional satellite data on forest disturbances contributed by Cornelius Senf, Professor of Earth Observation for Ecosystem Management.
Seidl and Senf aim to work with researchers from the University of Regensburg on an AI-powered monitoring system for their new project, BaySenseAI , part of the Bavarian climate research network bayklif2 with funding from the Bavarian Ministry of Science and the Arts. Their system is based on data from camera traps and acoustic sensors, alongside satellite and remote sensing data.
Here too, Berchtesgaden National Park is serving as a model landscape. Spanning valleys and mountains, it encompasses highly diverse microclimates and habitats in a relatively compact area. Researchers can trace the impact of environmental change on biodiversity along this elevation gradient. Over the long term, scientists hope the results can more accurately predict the change in biodiversity in Bavaria and beyond.
An important aim, as Seidl warns: "Climate-driven forest disturbances are becoming a supraregional problem, impacting diversity and impairing the societal benefits provided by forests." Those benefits include clean drinking water, recreational spaces, and carbon capture and storage. With this in mind, Seidl calls for forest management to adopt a closer focus on risk and resilience, with actions including the promotion of climate-adapted tree species, the facilitation of mixed-species forests, and increasing diversity in forests in terms of age, height, and structure.
Genetic diversity of aquatic communities
Around 100 kilometers to the north-west of Berchtesgaden National Park is the Osterseen nature reserve, a unique landscape of lakes and moorland in the alpine foothills created by melting glaciers in the last ice age. Here, Ann-Marie Waldvogel is speaker of Iffeldorf Limnological Research Station, operated by TUM since 1987.
Astrid Eckert / TUM The Professor of Global Change Limnology conducts research into how biological communities in freshwater lakes adjust to their environments, and what happens when those environments undergo rapid change or present extreme conditions. The biologist and her team plan to record and digitize the biodiversity of the Grosser Ostersee lake. Alongside fish and aquatic vegetation, they focus particularly on some of the smallest organisms in aquatic ecosystems: plankton. These organisms drifting in the water underpin many important functions in freshwater ecosystems. They contribute to nutrient cycling, biomass production, and oxygen generation, thereby helping to stabilize aquatic food webs.
Waldvogel explains that these important functions are well buffered in lakes with high levels of plankton diversity, boosting the resilience of the lake's ecosystem. The greater the genetic diversity of these organisms, the more likely the ecosystem will be to successfully adapt to the environmental impacts of climate change. For Ann-Marie Waldvogel, DNA is the starting-point of biodiversity: "Genetic diversity is the cradle of universal diversity."
The Ostersee lakes are in the grip of the first major heatwave of the year, with unusually low water levels. Master's students Jakob Voerkelius and Moritz Konschak and PhD student Tobias Nickel are steering an electrically powered boat from the research station boathouse through reed-fringed waterways to the Grosser Ostersee lake.
The lake is famed not only for its turquoise water, but also for its high morphological heterogeneity. Some areas are no more than knee-deep, while others can plunge to depths of up to 30 meters. After mooring their boat to a research buoy at the deepest point, the three students pump up water samples from various layers of the lake and pass them through filters. They take a fresh sample every two meters. Later, the environmental DNA and RNA molecules filtered out of these samples will be sequenced in the laboratory. The free-floating genetic material presents a picture of the lake's biodiversity and functional activity, and enables the researchers to discover which animal, plant, and microorganism species occur at this site and across different depths.
Astrid Eckert / TUM The research trip concludes with Jakob Voerkelius climbing into his diving suit and immediately breaking into a sweat. His task is to descend to the lake bottom and fill small plastic tubes with its sediment. The environmental DNA from the sediments will likewise help to build up a complete record of genetic diversity throughout the lake. To streamline the complex process of sampling in the future, Ann-Marie Waldvogel and her team in the ecoBay project , as part of the bayklif2 network, are collaborating with researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and TUM's Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence.
Together, the teams aim to develop a submersible robot capable of autonomously collecting samples of water and sediment, while simultaneously measuring the physical and chemical parameters of the water for smart analysis. "We are using the manually collected data to train this learning system," says Waldvogel. Over the medium term, she hopes that the results gathered from the protected ecosystem of the Ostersee lakes will be transferable to other freshwater ecosystems. "My plan is to develop a genomic indicator of ecosystem health, a system for fast, straightforward assessment of a lake's ecological condition," explains Waldvogel, and adds: "This will enable us to identify at an early stage when an ecosystem is under pressure, which functions are being impaired, and which species are threatened. In this way, we want to create an early warning system tailored to the protection of ecosystems and species that will be threatened in the future." Measurement and monitoring of biodiversity will thus help create a tool for more targeted support of nature conservation and water management.
The research conducted by Ann-Marie Waldvogel and Rupert Seidl reveals the profound impact of global change on biodiversity. "Human influence is changing our environment so rapidly that many species are reaching the limits of their adaptability. We are in a race against time," warns Waldvogel. According to both researchers, understanding the ecological processes behind these changes is crucial. Only such knowledge can inform effective strategies to conserve biodiversity.
Peter Neusser / TUM 
Uli Benz / TUM located in the Osterseen area, a protected nature
reserve.
Peter Neusser / TUM - The bayklif2 research network analyzes the impacts of climate change on biodiversity, water, crops, and health. Its six projects, combining ecology, genomics, sensor technology, and artificial intelligence, include ecoBay , which monitors the condition of Bavaria's lakes, and BaySenseAI predicting biodiversity change. The network is funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts.
- TUM operates the Friedrich N. Schwarz Research Station high above Berchtesgaden, at an altitude of 1,262 meters. The station is a hub for research into alpine ecosystems and habitat diversity in Berchtesgaden National Park. It brings together research, teaching, and science communication, and also provides seminar facilities and overnight accommodation for researchers.
- TUM's Limnological Research Station Iffeldorf is located in the Osterseen area, a protected nature reserve. Researchers there study the development of lakes and freshwater ecosystems and conduct longterm environmental monitoring. The station is also used for teaching and field research.
This article is from the fourth issue of the TUM Magazine .
