Polar Ecology and Health

With climate warming, polar ecosystems and their functions are changing rapidly. We study ongoing changes at different spatiotemporal scales and aim to quantify the consequences at different organisational levels (from individuals to ecosystems). Bird migrations and pathogen dynamics are a special focus of the group, given that consequences of rapid environmental change have immediate consequences for migratory behaviour and the ecological processes involved, including pathogen spread and dynamics. The integration of collected empirical data, available global dataset, and statistical as well as mechanistic modelling, is central in our scientific approach. Over time, we aim to contribute basic understanding of how global change processes alter ecosystem dynamics in polar regions.

Our expertise includes the following methods:

Field work in remote polar areas

Sampling and individual recording of bird movements (e.g. using GPS or light loggers)

Stochastic dynamic programming, individual-based modeling

BigData analyses (e.g. of remote sensing data)

Ancient DNA/RNA analyses in collaboration with High-latitude Biodiversity