Daten- und Modellierzentrum

Research interests

The main focuses of my research are vegetation and ecosystem processes and the role of vegetation in the Earth system. To study these topics I use process-based models (primarily the Dynamic Global Vegetation Model LPJ-GUESS) applied to spatial scales ranging from regional to global. Whilst much of my work involves improving the vegetation simulations for the present day and recent past (in particular utilising the wealth of remote sensing data made available by satellites) I also study vegetation in past geological ages (the Miocene) and simulate the effects of climate change on a vegetation and ecosystem functioning in the forthcoming century.

Specific projects

• Climate Change Impacts in Turkish Vegetation – A BMBF-funded project in collaboration with Turkish and British partners.  The overall goal is to produce a high-resolution environmental-risk map of the consequences of climate change in Turkey. Our role is to adapt the global version LPJ-GUESS to better describe the Turkish vegetation and then project the future changes to vegetation and productivity using climate data from a regional climate model.  The study is performed at a 1km resolution and makes use of both remotely sensed data and field observation from Turkish partners. In particular the very high spatial resolution (1km) and the use of locally-gathered soil depth information (novel for LPJ-GUESS but critical for calculating plant-available water in arid zones) are of particular value for this regional impacts study. 

• Vegetation in the Miocene – Using the output from a palaeoclimate model to provide meteorological data for LPJ-GUESS we are reconstructing the vegetation in Late Miocene (~10 million years ago) and investigating CO2 concentrations and some of the atmosphere-biosphere interactions that shaped our planet’s evolution.

• Coupling LPJ-GUESS to an Atmospheric Chemistry enabled GCM – With support from MPI Chemistry in Mainz I am working to couple LPJ-GUESS to the EMAC atmospheric chemistry model utilising the powerful MESSy interface.  This work will enabled investigations of many atmosphere-biosphere interactions and feedbacks including: trace gas emissions from vegetation and fire, changing vegetation structure and function, tropospheric ozone damage to plants and Nitrogen fertilisation and emissions.

• Fire in the Earth System – I am also working to improve the process-based representation of wildfire (in particular the SPITFIRE model) in vegetation models. Fire is key in shaping the functioning and structure of large areas of the terrestrial land surface and is responsible for large carbon dioxide and other trace gas fluxes. 

I am also the BiK-F liaison with the Frankfurt Cloud, a collaborative venture between Goethe University of Frankfurt and sponsors including Deutsche Bank AG and Interxion Deutschland GmbH.

Personal

As is apparent from my CV and previous publications, I am new to the area of Earth Systems Science, my previous research life was in the field of Experimental Particle Physics. I hope to bring ideas and techniques from Physics to my new endeavours.

Outside of science I enjoy playing football, various games of skill and chance, music and devil’s advocate. I also like to get out into the world and spend slightly too much time worrying about the state of things.  

Research interests

I have broad interests in evolution, ecology, conservation, and animal behavior.  My primary research program focuses on the evolution of species‘ environmental tolerances and spatial distributions, with frequent detours into conservation-oriented empirical studies.  I also maintain active research programs in phylogenetic methods and theory, as well as the neuroecology of marine fishes.  My work includes both basic and applied research, with a particular focus on developing quantitative methods.  I am an author of several popular software packages for conducting evolutionary and ecological analyses, including Converge, AWTY, ENMTools, and RWTY.  In my spare time I compose music for nature documentaries.

I teach technical courses in R on a volunteer or consulting basis for Software Carpentry, Data Carpentry, Transmitting Science, and PR Statistics.

External Links

List of publications on Google Scholar

List of publications on Researcher ID

List of publications on Scopus

Researcher profile on Orcid

Research interests
Fascinated by diversity and dynamics of life on Earth, my current work mainly focuses on spatiotemporal predictive distribution models, application of earth observation in biodiversity and ecosystem studies, and open geo-information tools for to support science-policy interactions. I am interested to understand global patterns of life and the associated underlying drivers. I, therefore, extensively develop spatio-temporal models and improve their performance and reliability in particular applications.

Main Projects

IPBES, Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, is an independent intergovernmental body, established by member States in 2012. It provides policymakers with objective scientific assessments about the state of knowledge regarding the planet’s biodiversity, ecosystems and the benefits they provide to people, as well as the tools and methods to protect and sustainably use these vital natural assets. IPBES mission is to strengthen knowledge foundations for better policy through science, for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, long-term human well-being and sustainable development. For more information visit www.ipbes.net
 
GEOEssential, Variables Workflows for Resource Efficiency and Environmental Management, is one of the four ERA-Planet projects, supported by the EU Horizon 2020 Programme. GEOEssential aims to strengthen the European Research Area by evaluating existing structures and platforms, and by providing new applications in the field of Earth Observation (EO) to monitor the progresses in environmental conditions towards policy targets. It will create cross-thematic workflows to evaluate, predict and monitor natural resources with Earth Observation tools, in particular in relation to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), IPBES, and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Our institute leads the biodiversity and ecosystem functioning work package. In close collaboration with other institutes, this work package will map the relevant data landscape and institutions, develop specific workflows for indicators, evaluate the application of EO products to inform dynamic models, review the exiting policy and reporting needs, and finally transfer the annotated processing services and workflows for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning and services to the GEOEssential project dashboard. For more information visit www.geoessential.eu

External Links

List of my publications on Google Scholar
Follow me on Twitter @AidinNiamir

Research interests
• Metadata applications describing biological/biodiversity data 
• Integrative models using this data 
• High-performance computing in context of computational biology