Research Interests
I'm a paleoecologist interested in long term vegetation dynamics of mountain regions. I use pollen, macrofossil and charcoal analyses to study the effect of past climatic changes and human land-use on mountain forests. I combine these paleoecological methods with spatially-explicit dynamic vegetation models to identify drivers of forest dynamics, test relevant ecological hypotheses and make projections about future vegetation changes in response to Climate Change. Currently, I'm analyzing ancient DNA (aDNA) from subfossil plant remains to quantify changes in the genetic variability of tree species since the last Ice Age and test hypotheses regarding past range expansion.
My research goal is to assess the impact of future global change on mountain forests, from the genetic to the landscape scale, to protect multi-level biodiversity and maintain fragile alpine ecosystems and their services for future generations.
