Viewed from above, the gaps in the canopy of the alluvial forest are more noticeable. All hope now rests on the oak trees.
Image: Robert Gommlich
At first glance, everything looks green and healthy. But in the Leipzig Burgaue, a unique ecosystem is dry and threatened with extinction. And with the floodplain forest, its biodiversity disappears.
Ahen Rolf Engelmann turns off the main road onto the forest path, the smell of decay wafts towards him through the open window. Passing stout oaks and ash trees, he steers his minibus deeper into the forest. Dense treetops shield the sky, sunbeams fall palely on the ground. In the city center the air was oppressively hot, here in the Burgaue nature reserve it is noticeably cooler. After a short drive through the forest, the botanist from the University of Leipzig stops and gets out. All around is forest, dense alluvial forest, and right in the middle a crane on rails towers over the treetops. This is the right place to understand the seriousness of the situation.
The monster is called the Leipzig Auwaldkran, and biologists have been using it to research the complex ecology of the forest since 2001. Scientists from the Czech Republic are busy here, Engelmann doesn’t want to disturb their experiments and steps aside a few meters. A large-scale research project is intended to clarify how the alluvial forest reacts to the great upheavals that humans are burdening it with.