The biosphere reserve Rhoen, representing the low-mountainous temperate broad-leaf forest region, was founded in 1991 and is one of fourteen MAB reserves in Germany. The reserve includes parts of the states Bavaria, Hesse and Thuringia that developed a central management concept for this so called "Land of open expanses".
The biosphere reserve Rhoen represents a type of cultural landscape that was formed by human land use during the course of many centuries. Today, agriculture, forestry, industry and trade but also tourism have different demands with respect to the landscape and its resources. Simultaneously, the Rhoen is a refuge of many animal and plant species, some of which are threatened. Besides natural and near-pristine ecosystems that are preserved as relatively small remnants, semi-natural and managed ecosystems such as low-productive grassland and mountain meadows occupy large proportions of the Rhoen area. The protection of these species and ecosystems largely depends on the continuation of the traditional land-use systems that originally formed this landscape.
As a consequence, the protection, management and development cannot be reduced to certain selected sections of the semi-natural landscape, but has to take into account the whole "human-environment system". Together with the people living and working in the area, concepts have to be developed, implemented and evaluated that aim at ecosystem conservation but are at the same time bearing on economy.
Our field trip will visit three areas that all belong to the landscape of the central Upper Rhoen. They represent natural and semi-natural habitat types: a fern-rich mountainous beechforest on mull-brown earth over basalt rocks (830 m a.s.l.), a raised bog complex with minerotrophic and ombrogenous sites (the "Black Bog";780 m a.s.l.) and Central European mountainous meadows and matt-grass (Nardus stricta) grassland over basaltic rock (880 m a.s.l.).
Leader: Annette Otte |
The MAB Biosphere-Reserve Rhoen