The Research Center Forest Ecosystems-Forest Decline (Forschungszentrum Waldökosysteme-Waldsterben) as it was then called, was founded in January 1984 as a joint research institution of the Foresty, Biology and Geology departments of Göttingen University. As the Research Center's activities ranged far wider than merely the investigation of forest decline, its name was altered in 1988 to Forest Ecosystems Research Center (Forschungszentrum Waldökosysteme).
As a response to the Federal Ministry of Research and Technology's call for the setting up of ecosystem research centers, one such center was created within the Forest Ecosystem Research Center in 1989.
Supported by the Ministry and the State of Lower Saxony government, the research project "Conditions of Stability of Forest Ecosystems" was begun in that same year and ran until 1993. It comprised 71 individual projects from various institutions from within and without Göttingen, which clearly shows how widely based the Center's interdisciplinary ecosystem research is.
The second project phase (1994 - 1998), "The Dynamics of Change in Sylvan Ecosystems" is also sponsored by the Ministry for science, education, research and technology
(BMBF)
and by Lower Saxony and comprises 52 part projects.
Apart from all this, the Research Center also manages and co-ordinates joint projects of the Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Forestry
(BML)
and the German Federal Environment Foundation
(Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt).
At present, 15 University departments and 10 extramural institutes are represented in the Research Center.