I am currently working as a postdoc in the group Causes and Consequences of Biodiversity Change. I am a community ecologist studying the effects of global changes on the structure of ecological communities and the functioning of ecosystems. I am also interested in the role of plant communities in soil conservation. I have a particular interest in linking ecological studies with socio-economic data to better inform management policies.

My current project aims to investigate the relationships between landscape composition and configuration, biodiversity, and ecosystem services within the Biodiversity Exploratories. The main objective of this project is to determine the “optimal” landscape composition (in terms of proportions of fields with varying management intensities) that minimises the trade-offs between biodiversity conservation and the delivery of multiple ecosystem services.

I am a community ecologist interested in the mechanisms that shape the structure of ecological communities and their response to land use intensification. I use functional trait-based approaches to: (i) identify and generalise the effects of land use intensification that operate at different spatial and temporal scales, across multiple taxonomic groups and trophic levels (plants, herbivores, pollinators, predators and top-predators) (ii) investigate the mechanisms underlying biodiversity response, and particularly the role of trophic interactions.

Currently, I am involved in a new project which aims to investigate biodiversity-ecosystem function relationships at the landscape level within the larger Biodiversity Exploratories project. The specific objectives of this project are to: (i) assess and quantify the role of local and landscape diversity, as well as their interaction with the surrounding land use, in driving the capacity of an ecosystem to provide multiple ecosystem functions (i.e. ecosystem multifunctionality); (ii) evaluate how the landscape configuration of diversity and land use intensity drives landscape level ecosystem function and multifunctionality.

As a landscape ecologist and I have been devoted to integrating a variety of observational and experimental methodologies in spatially-explicit sampling designs to build models of how spatiotemporal changes of agricultural landscapes influence biodiversity patterns, and how this in turn influences ecosystem services production and human-wellbeing in the tropics. I have a special interest in understanding the extent to which extinction thresholds in biodiversity translate into trade-offs, or synergies in ES provision; and (2) how spatiotemporal changes in agricultural matrices influence the ecological processes related to ES provided by mobile-agents.

Currently, I am involved in the BEF Up-2 project which aims to predict how changes to land use affect ecosystem service supply and landscape multifunctionality within the larger Biodiversity Exploratories. More specifically, we aim i) to determine the role of both plant biodiversity and landscape properties driving both forest and crop ecosystem services; ii) to create proxy models that link drivers to services via ecological functions to produce maps of supply of the major ecosystem services within the three Exploratories regions, iii) to simulate scenarios of how changes to land management, stakeholder demands, and biodiversity would affect the supply of different services.

I am an expert in Environmental Sciences, Policy and Management with a special interest in the relationship between humans and nature, as I originally come from the field of social sciences. From November 2017 I will perform a PhD project on the “Socio-cultural Dynamics of Ecosystem Services” with Dr. Peter Manning (SBiK-F) and Prof. Dr. Blättel-Mink (Department of Social Sciences of Goethe University) as my main supervisors. One of the main tasks of this project is to analyse why, when and how specific stakeholder groups or individuals demand and use Ecosystems Services and how trade-offs between these groups could be solved. To get a deep insight into these issues, the practical parts of the three-year project will be field studies within the three German regions of the Biodiversity Exploratories project. The outcome will be the identification of land management strategies that deliver ecosystem multifunctionality in grasslands and forests.

From 2016-2017 I worked as a Junior Researcher in the Institute for Social Ecology, focusing on Social Sustainability and the use of qualitative and quantitative research methods. Before this, I completed a master’s program with a thesis about how to measure the societal impact of sustainability projects, in cooperation with the Wuppertal Institute. This demonstrated my passion to first think in a holistic way and also to generate societal impact to promote sustainable development.

I am an enthusiastic conservationist with research interests in the governance and management of ecosystem services beyond Protected Areas (PAs). I am keen to understand how anthropogenic disturbances influence biological resources and ecological processes in our changing world, and how these changes subsequently affect human well being. I am also interested in identifying new approaches to conserving biodiversity beyond PAs, to ensure a constant flow of ecosystem services in the face of increasing urbanization, anthropogenic disturbances, and climate change.

My current research within the Kili-SES project will focus on the relations between the major components of the social-ecological system. I will assess the synergies and trade-offs between components of biodiversity, the supply and demand of NCP and multiple constituents of the well-being of major stakeholders. Together with my colleagues, we will uncover natural and social drivers of these relations at the landscape-scale, and identify options for future decision-making.

I am currently working as a PhD candidate within the Kilimanjaro Social-Ecological System (Kili-SES), and my supervisor is Dr Pete Manning. I am interested in ecosystems research, especially relating to the ecosystem services derived from both natural and plantation forests.

My PhD research will focus on assessing which biodiversity components in soil and plant communities underpin regulating Nature’s Contribution to People (NCP) across the climate and land-use gradients of Kilimanjaro, by employing a trait-based approach. Specifically, we aim to i. assess the formation, protection and decontamination of soil and sediments, ii. to assess carbon storage and sequestration in soil and vegetation iii. to determine the extent of landslide and fire risk across climate and land-use gradient (as a proxy measure for the regulation of hazards and extreme events) and to identify the components of biodiversity which drive these NCPs.

Currently I am a PhD student with the Kilimanjaro Social Ecological System (Kili-SES) project. I will mainly be looking into the linkages between biodiversity components and the supply of multiple material nature's contributions to people (NCP), across the climate and land use gradients in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. In particular, I will evaluate the supply of material NCP present in Kilimanjaro, and find out which biodiversity components underpin both beneficial and detrimental NCP. In addition I will study spatial variation in NCP supply.

My background is mainly wildlife management and conservation, with research interests in animal ecology and human-wildlife interactions. More recently I have become interested in understanding how to incorporate human and social aspects into conservation projects, in order to help and inform decision making about the use and management of our Protected areas.

Based at University of Bern