Dörte Bachmann receives the Vontobel Award 2015
- Institute of Agricultural Sciences
- Awards
Dr. Dörte Bachmann has been honoured with the Hans Vontobel Award for her outstanding doctoral thesis in the area of agricultural sciences. In her thesis, she examines why biomass production of diverse grassland is larger than that of less diverse grassland.
In her thesis work, which was conducted at the Professorship of Grassland Sciences, Dörte Bachmann considered how biomass production and biodiversity are linked and how these connections come into being. The findings attracted people's attention.
In previous studies, ecologists have consistently found that species-rich plant communities produce more biomass in comparison with species-poor ones, meaning that they can retain more carbon. But the theoretical concepts underlying these findings, however, have not been proven in experimental studies until now. In her studies, Dörte Bachmann investigated if differences in water uptake and light use can explain increased biomass production in high diverse grasslands.