I am a PostDoc researcher in the RSC4Earth Lab at the Leipzig University. I think patterns of plant function - environment relationships in a changing world are fascinating.

Functional Ecology promises to make these interactions - e.g. heat waves induced by stomatal closure, or land slides - predictable. Three steps are crucial in this journey: (1) Plant function (what a plant “does”) can be captured by their traits, and I want to learn if different data streams (in-situ measured or remotely sensed) inform about similar aspects. (2) Describe how plant traits vary with environmental factors across scales. (3) Identify how trait variation is linked to ecosystem functioning. I joined in to work towards this goal by contributing to the trait-environment relationship at global, ecoregion-scale (Joswig et al. 2022 NEE), tested what gap-filled trait data can be used for (Joswig et al. 2023, GEB). And am now set on the idea to understand how to integrate different data streams examplified for intraspecific diversity of beech forests (1).

My work is plant-based and has contributed conceptual synthesis in this field. I am committed to communicating my research to students, practitioners and the public, e.g. in the form of teaching (UZH), outreach (“Scientifica”, UZH; long night of Science, MPI Jena), projects in the art-science (with Ilya Fedotov-Fedorov at Gleis Dreiviertel, Bern), podcast (BAM, Berlin), the story telling (three minute thesis contest, UZH), and the animation realm (2022 April 2nd,5th Global Science Film Festival Zürich).

PostDoc at Leipzig University | Functional Ecology | PhD University of Zürich | Biologist (Bsc.) and Geographer (Msc.&PhD).