Nadja Kabisch joined Leibniz Universität Hannover as the new Professor of Digital Landscape Ecology. She started her work at the Institute of Physical Geography and Landscape Ecology (PhyGeo) on 1 April 2022.
Ecosystem functions and landscape ecology
Nadja Kabisch studied geography at the Martin Luther University Halle Wittenberg and during a semester abroad at the Université de la Réunion in Saint Denis. After her diploma, she worked in the Department of Landscape Ecology at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ Leipzig as part of the EU-FP6 project PLUREL on European population development, land use change and ecosystem services, especially in urban and peri-urban areas. She completed her doctorate thesis on these research results at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg.
Landscape ecology became her major research topic as a postdoc: in the BiodivERsA project URBES and in the EU-FP7 project GREENSURGE in the Department of Landscape Ecology at the Humboldt University of Berlin as well as in the Department of Ecosystem Services at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research-iDiv in Leipzig. Here, Ms Kabisch focused her research on nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation and was a member of the EU-EKLIPSE Expert Working Group on Nature-based Solutions to Promote Climate Resilience in Urban Areas.
Outstanding scientist
Since August 2017, Nadja Kabisch heads the BMBF-FONA junior research group GreenEquityHEALTH, which focuses on the increasingly important issues of environmental justice and possible health effects of green spaces in the context of climate change. Her collaboration with researchers from the fields of psychiatry, psychology and neuroscience at the Charité Berlin in the Neurourban Studies Forum demonstrates her interest in health-related issues. From 2019 to 2020, Nadja Kabisch was assigned as Visiting Professor for Urban Ecology at the Technische Universität Berlin (TU). Nadja Kabisch is also a contributing author to working group III on Mitigation of Climate Change of the 6th IPPC Assessment Report and was listed as a Highly Cited Researcher in the Web of Science in 2020 and 2021.
Ms Kabisch is a member of the Human Mobility, Environment and Space (SH7) expert panel in the peer review process of the ERC Consolidator Grants 2021. Panel members are selected and invited by the European Research Council.
Holistic approaches and environmental data
The focus of the research of Nadja Kabisch and her working group in Hanover is interdisciplinary. They study the consequences of global change: Processes such as land use change, climate change and urbanisation and impacts on the functionality of ecosystems and their provision of ecosystem services, especially in urban and peri-urban areas. Thus, their research interest addresses ecological functions and processes as well as their interdependencies with social systems in terms of impacts also on humans, for example in the context of health and well-being.
They use systemic approaches, which combine social-ecological with social-technical approaches, especially in discussions on climate adaptation, sustainability and resilience. For this content-related work, innovative and modern measurement and modelling approaches on different spatial and temporal scales will be used and combined in a digital landscape ecology. Furthermore, Nadja Kabisch will continue to collaborate in the context of applied research with local and regional actors in environmental planning, e.g. in the context of implementation processes of nature-based solution approaches.
Congratulations and welcome to the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Professor Kabisch!
