I have a background in forest science and ecology, and I am curious about how trees interact with their environment and their neighbours, how they find their niches through competition and succession, and how they respond and adapt to environmental change, especially when we look at these processes from a larger perspective.

My PhD project focuses on developing and testing the European version of the dynamic vegetation model LPJ-GUESS. I work on initializing forests with real inventory data and developing and testing representations of forest disturbance and management in the model. Trying to answer scientific questions such as:

1. How is the European forest carbon sink changing, and what are the underlying drivers? Are changes mainly driven by local disturbances or by a more general decline in forest growth?

2. Could rewilding be an alternative way to manage forests in the future? How can we achieve near-term policy targets while accounting for long-term forest responses, given that future forest trajectories depend on the actions we take today?

3. How well can a vegetation model capture competition and succession in forests? What do these processes look like in the real world, and can we generalize and represent them in the model world?

Perhaps a never-ending part of my life, trying to understand forests a little better, through both the language of ecology and the language of computation.