Nederlands
Our mission and strategy
The research conducted at NIOO-KNAW aims at understanding how the biosphere functions, how this changes through human impact and what the likely responses are. Living organisms change in response to their changing environment. In turn, living organisms themselves change the physics, chemistry and geology of the planet.
Mission
The basic mission of ecology and also of NIOO-KNAW is to understand these interactions between organisms and their changing environment. More specifically, the research at NIOO-KNAW aims at elucidating the adaptation of individual organisms, the variation within populations, the interactions between species, the interactions between biotic and abiotic components and the interactions between ecological processes and biogeochemical cycles in ecosystems. Although the research done at NIOO-KNAW is basic research on ecological processes, it is increasingly being embedded within an applied context because in practice, blue-sky research often turns out to be very applicable for solving social problems.
Strategy
Thanks to the broad coverage of animal, plant and microbial ecology in terrestrial, freshwater and marine environments given by its three locations, the Netherlands Institute of Ecology has a unique opportunity to develop a broad and comprehensive approach to ecological problems. This approach requires basic comparative studies and the careful and sustained observation of selected populations and ecosystems. It also requires an evolutionary approach, in order to enhance our understanding of the processes involved. Moreover, it requires studies which:
- examine the linkage of processes at different levels of biological hierarchy – from the genome to the ecosystem;
- develop and implement new analytical and experimental tools and the theoretical models required to explain and predict changes in species, communities and ecosystems.