Within the BMBF-sponsored research initiative BonaRes , a new knowledge centre for soil functions and services in Germany has been developed: the BonaRes – Centre for Soil Research. The Centre is a cooperative project of the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History Görlitz (SMNG), the Technical University of Munich, the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) and the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. To this end, within the BonaRes Centre, the SMNG works on the identification and quantification of biological drivers of soil functions, the development of indicators for assessing these functions, the analysis of effects of agricultural management practices on soil fauna, as well as the provision of biological parameters for models of soil functions.
