National parks as model regions for interdisciplinary long-term ecological research: The bavarian forest and šumavá national parks underway to transboundary ecosystem research

Abstract

National parks are protected areas that have been excluded from human intervention and exploitation in order to safeguard the species inventory and natural processes in a way as 'true to nature as possible'. As permanently protected ecosystems in a process of near-natural development, national parks serve as extremely attractive control areas for ecosystem research and, especially, for scientific, long-term monitoring. In the midst of Europe, in a landscape that has been utilised for millennia, the existence of extensive protected areas can provide answers to an abundance of basic questions that cover an enormously wide variety of themes. National park research has several functions such as to develop the scientific foundation for the implementation of national park goals; monitor the efficiency of national park management; research the undisturbed development of the biocenoses; study the socio-economic and socio-ecological relationships between the national park, its visitors, and its periphery; and determine anthropogenic influences and their effects on the ecological communities. Based on these basic considerations, a research concept for the Bavarian Forest was developed, and the practical implementation of the individual monitoring elements is presented in this chapter. In the next step, the mass reproduction of the spruce bark beetle (Ips typographus L.) is used as an example of how a long-term monitoring concept can help to explore and explain the causes of processes, their effects on the ecosystems, and their human dimensions. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.