The Group

Prof. Dr. Jaboury Ghazoul
Jaboury Ghazoul is an ecologist working on biodiversity and ecosystem management in human-dominated landscapes. His main research interests include pollination and agroforestry, conservation and restoration, and the ecological and social dynamics of landscape change.

Florian Knauss
Senior Lecturer and deputy
Florian's work consists mostly of teaching and supervising theses in the context of conservation, monitoring, landscape evaluation and rural development. He also runs the Applied Ecosystem Management field course in Serbia, his new second home. Florian is currently the coordinator of the Forest and Landscape curriculum at D-USYS and the deputy of the chair.

Administration

Ankara del Carmen Marjatshang-​Chen
Ankara runs the institute secretariat for ITES and is administrative assistant for two Professorships within the Institute, including the Chair of Ecosystem Management. Ankara provides day-to-day administrative support, her responsibilities include reporting to the management, handling human resources and finances, organising and scheduling events, and acting as the point of contact between employees, guests and the various ETH bodies and services.

Postdocs & Senior Researchers

Anne Giger Dray Anne works on applied research projects dedicated to renewable resources management and conflict resolution with a strong emphasis on community participation and engagement in order to promote ecological sustainability. She develop and use dedicated tools to support stakeholders’ engagement such as agent-​based models and role-​playing games. Besides that, she is a dedicated lecturer for various Bachelor and Master.

Giacomo Vaccario, Dr.
Trained as a physicist, Giacomo dedicates himself to developing data-driven models of economic and social systems. The application of these models contributes to comprehending relevant societal issues, such as the emergence and stability of collaboration and the resilience of socio-economic systems. Currently, he works on a theoretical framework to understand and incentivize socio-environmental transitions toward wood construction for climate mitigation (see external page MainWood Project)

Ivan Novotny, Dr.
Ivan is an agroecologist who is passionate about addressing food security concerns, promoting sustainable food production systems, fostering household economy, and advocating for collective land use management. His approach is characterized by a transdisciplinary mindset, emphasizing active engagement with social actors. At present, Ivan is engaged in a project that employs serious games as a tool to facilitate discussions on potential landscape alternatives, aiming to achieve net zero carbon emissions in Scotland. Ivan is also invested in various teaching activities, including a field course in Scotland.

Xuezhu Zhai, Dr. 
Xuezhu, with her background in landscape architecture, concentrates her research on the interaction between people and landscapes, with a focus on ecological restoration and nature-based solutions. Her work delves into public perceptions of landscapes and aims to enhance understanding and support for ecosystems and nature-based solutions through innovative strategies, thereby promoting environmental sustainability and human well-being. Currently, Xuezhu is working on a project that engages stakeholders in rethinking, co-designing, and evaluating river restoration scenarios by visualizing the strategic use of daylight. See external page Project re∙flect  

PhD Students & Research Assistants

Adelaide Sander
My research consists of building an agent-based model describing the socio-ecological landscape in the context of Scottish restoration with the aim of modeling implications of changing policy and financing. Specifically, I investigate the motivations behind nature restoration—why individuals choose to restore their land and what encourages communities to collaborate on these initiatives.

Alexandra Werner
Alexandra is passionate about plant-soil interactions in peatlands of the northern hemisphere. In her PhD project she will try to entangle the (a)biotic drivers that influence greenhouse gas emissions from organic-rich soils in Scotland and how they change once forest restoration schemes are implemented on these soils. Specifically, she will focus on how this land cover change affects biogeochemical processes, belowground vegetation traits and microbial communities.

Chiara Durrer
My research project is on functional biodiversity and ecosystem services of pollination in agroecosystems. I investigate how biodiversity enhancement practices improve diversity and abundance of wild bees, and how these pollinator communities react to climate and land-​use changes. I aim to model pollinator communities under different scenarios, and explore how biodiversity enhancement practices could stabilise food yield and quality by ensuring pollination success.

Daisy Furrokh
My doctoral research will utilise eDNA and pollen metabarcoding to build ecological networks relating native plants and trees to pollination and productivity of coffee crops, in multi-scale agroforests in Kodagu, Western Ghats of India. It will also integrate the influence of farm management practices on the resilience of these networks. Understanding the ecology of land use dynamics will help inform land management to protect biodiversity and crop security.

Erika Berith Soans
I am currently a PhD candidate researching below-ground soil processes that influence greenhouse gas emissions from peaty soils in the Scottish Highlands. My work aims to deepen our understanding of these critical processes to inform climate change mitigation strategies. Organic soils are crucial carbon stores in both temperate and tropical regions, and the recent expansion of forest restoration schemes has led to substantial areas of organic-rich soils being planted with trees, especially in Scotland’s upland regions. My research investigates the impact of woodland establishment on soil biota and structure and its consequent effect on soil greenhouse gas fluxes. Beyond my academic pursuits, I am deeply interested in the intersection of science and policy.

Sebastian Ruile
My doctoral research is based on the PAPPUS project and is committed to understand the role of human decision-making in the plant assembly process and its impact on the plant-insect interaction within an urban context. To unravel the underlying drivers of plant diversity within cities, I aim to incorporate both environmental and social factors into the analysis.

Rama Harihara Subramanian
My research work broadly aims to investigate the effect of land use in shaping plant-pollinator interactions in Indian coffee agroforestry. This involves understanding various local and landscape level factors that governs the complex plant-pollinator dynamics of this tropical agroforestry. I strongly believe that my doctoral research work will highlight the pathways that affect these interaction networks and subsequent emergent properties of these production landscape which has a significant ecological, conservation and economic relevance. Apart from academics, I enjoy playing Indian classical flute and illustrating nature. 

Anna Edgar
Anna is responsible for developing the Scotscape toolkit, which gives stakeholders in Scottish environmental restoration and land management tools to explore, discuss, and develop land management strategies. She joined the group after working on environmental restoration in Rustavi, Georgia, and brings her experience as an ecologist, journalist, and researcher to developing and implementing the toolkit. 

Johanna Wierer
I am working on adapting and implementing the ScotScape toolkit in Scotland. I work on bringing together diverse perspectives and supporting the collaborative exploration of landscape futures. I have a background in Forest and Landscape Management and am particularly interested in how different stakeholders engage with and shape landscapes. Based on my experience in game development and facilitation, I am working to develop a participatory approach, using serious games to support dialogue, collaboration and inclusive decision-making processes in complex land management contexts.

Jiugeng Sun 
Jiugeng is a computer scientist whose research interests lie at the intersection of visual analytics and social intelligence, with a focus on designing interactive systems for analysing complex multi-stakeholder discourse to understand environmental values. More broadly, he is interested in the potential of visualisation and human-AI collaboration as tools for social good, including supporting landscape management and environmental decision-making.

Staff

Maaike Goedkoop
Maaike is the project manager for external page MainWood, a research consortium for the wood production chain (from forest to building), nationally and internationally. MainWood consists of researchers from EPFL, WSL, Empa and ETH-Zurich.

Kirsti Määttänen
Kirsti is the Lab Manager for Ecosystem Management group.