Soil and Sediment: Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning meeting
Wageningen, The Netherlands, April 6-11, 1997

Questions

Tasks for individuals attending the April workshop:
Based on literature reviews and new knowledge each person should consider the following questions. The information should be synthesized in 3-5 pages for distribution at the meeting.

Note – we expect all participants to come with this in hand…This is a working conference! You will be asked by your domain chair to present this to your group (brief summary)

Questions:

• Is there a biogeographical synthesis of species diversity for
  “your” group of organisms? If not what data are available to
  assess our state of knowledge for the biodiversity of your group?
  (come with literature citations)
  • Are sampling methods on a global scale an impediment for
    the task of documenting biodiversity?
• What is the current status of knowledge for the functional role
  your group plays in ecosystems? Answer this at both the species
  level and at the functional group level (i.e., If you don’t
  know functions for groups or classes of organisms then list it that way)
  • Are there experiments/methods being conducted or planned that
    link biodiversity to ecosystem functioning?
  • What are the major gaps of knowledge concerning functional
    role of the group?
  • What methods, techniques are available that could be
    used to close the gaps?
• Based on the current literature, how does your group of organisms
  • Link functionally to other groups of organisms in the domain?
  • Link functionally to other groups of organisms in different
    domains (soils, freshwater or marine sediments, atmosphere)?
• How does disturbance (elevated CO2 and changes in temperature,
  rainfall, land use ) impact the group of organisms?

For the biogeochemists:

• What are the major biogeochemical processes in your domain
  and how do these link to other domains?
• How does biogeochemistry link to the different groups of
  organisms?