Name: Research Fellow Dorothee Drucker, University of Tubingen, Germany

Biography: Dr. habil. Dorothée Drucker is a senior researcher at the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen in Germany. She specializes in the study of stable isotopes from teeth and bones from the Late Pleistocene and Holocene, with emphasis on climatic and human impacts on animal ecology and the evolution of the human diet in ancient hunter-gatherers. After completing a PhD in Biogeochemistry in 2001, she was a post-doctoral researcher at the Canadian Wildlife Service in Saskatoon (Canada) sponsored by the Fyssen Foundation and at the Department of Geoscience at the University of Tübingen (Germany) funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She was awarded a fellowship from the Margarete-von-Wrangell habilitation program for academic women from 2012 to 2017. She teaches several courses on palaeoecology and stable isotope tracking of Late Quaternary terrestrial ecosystems for the Master’s degree in Geoecology, Geosciences and Archaeological Sciences.

Title: Isotopic insights into the Paleo-Anthropocene

Abstract: Growing human influence on the global environment, with consequences on ecosystems functioning and biodiversity, has reached an unprecedent scale, leading to the definition of a new era known as the Anthropocene. Along the debate on the start of this unofficial geologic epoch, several analysts have been insisting that human impacts on species distribution and animal population dynamics have been in play well before the Industrial Age or the Neolithic Revolution. Isotopic tracking offers the opportunity to further explore the anthropogenic impact on the terrestrial environment through the reconstruction of past trophic interactions. From the extinction of megafauna to paleo-synanthropic behavior of carnivores, this talk will review isotopic evidence of human niche construction through case studies in Eurasia from approximately 45,000 to 10,000 years ago. I will consider the role of ancient hunter-gatherers as a keystone species and how their impact on the environment paved the way into the Anthropocene.

Name: Professor Laura Pereira, Global Change Institute, University of the Witwatersrand and Researcher at Stockholm Resilience Centre

Biography: Laura Pereira is Professor in Sustainability Transformations and Futures at the Global Change Institute at Wits University and a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University. She is an interdisciplinary sustainability scientist, having been trained in ecology, law, zoology and human geography. She completed her DPhil in Geography at Oxford University in 2012, before working internationally at various institutions including the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, the University of Cape Town, Stellenbosch University, City University of London and Utrecht University. Laura sits on the IPBES Task Force on scenarios and models, was a review editor for the IPBES Values assessment and is a lead author for the IPBES Transformative change assessment. She was a contributing author to the Africa chapter of the IPCC’s 6^th Assessment report and has been both a coordinating lead author and a lead author for various UNEP GEO Assessments.

Title: Why we need transformative scenarios for people and nature: Diverse scenario approaches, including the Nature Futures framework

Abstract: There is general scientific agreement on the need for transformative change in order to address the systemic poly-crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and growing inequalities globally. However, what this transformative change is and what the futures looks like if we are able to achieve it remains uncertain. There are also plural desirable futures that could emerge from transformative interventions, these will look different in different places and from different people’s perspectives and knowledge systems. When it comes to modelling how to achieve these outcomes, there is a dearth of scenarios that outline preferable futures for people and nature. The former IPBES Exert group on scenarios and models, and then the subsequent task force therefore underwent a 5 year participatory and expert-led process that culminated in the development of the Nature Futures framework. In this talk, I will outline the history of how this process was undertaken as well as what some of the outputs have been and how the scientific community has rallied together to help expand and further develop the framework, especially in the context of modelling.

Name: Professor Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser, Gutenberg Research College, Germany

Biography: Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser is a German archaeologist and zooarchaeologist, specializing in research on the behavioural evolution of early humans. She studied Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology, Geology/Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology at the Universities of Kiel, Tübingen, and Cologne in Germany, where she obtained her doctorate in 1992.

After completing her doctoral studies, she held research positions, including at the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz. In 2003, she was appointed as a Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology professor at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, where she continues to teach and conduct research. She leads the Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for Human Behavioral Evolution, MONREPOS, in Neuwied, Germany, a facility of the Leibniz Association, as a department of the Leibniz Center for Archaeology.

Gaudzinski-Windheuser's research has primarily focused on studying Paleolithic sites across Europe, particularly emphasizing zooarchaeological analyses and reconstructing human subsistence behaviors and ecology. Her work has shed light on early humans' hunting tactics, prey preferences, and butchering practices, providing valuable insights into their cognitive abilities, social fabric, and adaptations within their ecological niche.

Gaudzinski-Windheuser has led excavations and research projects across Europe. Her interdisciplinary approach, combining archaeological, zooarchaeological, and taphonomic analyses, has significantly advanced our understanding of human behavioural evolution. Her current research focuses on Early-Middle Pleistocene exposures at the site of Melka Kunture in Ethiopia.

Title: Reconstructing Neanderthal Ecology at the Middle Palaeolithic Site of Neumark-Nord (Germany)

Abstract: Reconstructing the ecological impact of Pleistocene hunter-gatherer groups on their environments is a formidable challenge in studying past hominin ecology. The Last Interglacial (Eemian, approximately 125,000 years ago) lake landscape of of Neumark-Nord (Germany) presents an exceptional opportunity to explore the  interactions between Neanderthals and their floral and faunal surroundings. This open-air locality preserves an exceptionally rich  archaeologicaland palaeontological  record within deeply stratified lake sediments and offers a remarkably rich paleoenvironmental, archaeological, and faunal archive accumulated in water holding basins during the Eemian Interglacial.

The Neumark-Nord sediments were exposed in the open-cast lignite mine Mücheln, in the Geiseltal valley near Merseburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany (51°19’28”N, 11°53’56”E). After its 1985 discovery, the Neumark-Nord 1 basin was investigated by Dietrich Mania and his team in a continuous rescue-archaeology operation until the end of mining activities in the mid-1990s. Their work      provided detailed insights into the geology, palaeoecology, and archaeology of the, at its maximum extension, ~24-hectare Neumark-Nord 1 palaeobasin. The basin has become well-known for the discoveries of numerous virtually complete skeletons of large mammals, e.g. straight-tusked elephants, rhinos, fallow deer, and aurochs, and an abundance of faunal remains in general, interspersed with a wide range of archaeological traces of Neanderthal activities around its shores (Meller 2010).

The remains of the substantially smaller (~1.6 hectares) Neumark-Nord 2 basin was discovered by Mania’s team during reclamation works in the abandoned mine complex in the late 1990s. Situated about 100 m northeast of Neumark-Nord 1, the Neumark-Nord 2 basin was subjected to a series of multidisciplinary investigations and long-term archaeological excavations between 2004 and 2008 (see Gaudzinski-Windheuser and Roebroeks (2014) for a review).

The Neumark-Nord 1 and 2 pollen records and the known duration of individual Pollen Assemblage Zones (PAZ) of the Last Interglacial provide great temporal control for finds made in both basin deposits, as well as the means to correlate the deposits of both basins on the scale of specific vegetation zones (Gaudzinski-Windheuser et al. 2018).

Together with archaeological and charcoal evidence from Neumark-Nord studies demonstrated a clear ecological footprint left by hominin activities, including the use of fire, which resulted in a long-lasting period of open vegetation in the lake landscape (Roebroeks et al. 2021). The widespread occurrence of butchery marks and hunting lesions (Gaudzinski Windheuser et al. 2018) on faunal remains, including those of straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus, with a minimum of 57 individuals documented over a period of ~ 2,000 years), provides compelling evidence of the extensive and long-term exploitation of faunal resources by Neanderthal groups (Gaudzinski-Windheuser et al. 2023).

This site offers a unique opportunity to study the impact that Neanderthal hunter-gatherers had on their ecosystems through their activities which included repetitive burning, intensive hunting practices and a semi-permanent presence around the water bodies, thus modifying the landscapes they inhabited during the Last Interglacial there. Ongoing isotope and genetic studies of a wide range of prey animals allow us to study their impact in more detail.

Name: Senior Researcher Lutz Kindler, Gutenberg Research College, Germany

Biography: Lutz Kindler is a German prehistorian and zooarchaeologist, specialised in taphonomy, palaeoecology and the evolution of human diet and subsistence in early humans. He studied Pre-and Protohistoric Archaeology, Geology/Palaeontology, Zoology and Ancient History at the Universities of Bonn and Cologne and obtained his PhD in Prehistory at the University of Mainz in 2007.

From 2002 onwards he held several pre- and post-doc research grants and stipends at the Palaeolithic unit of the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Monrepos, Neuwied. He became senior scientist in 2011 and is currently person responsible for the Taphonomy and Zooarchaeology Laboratory (TaphZooLab) at MONREPOS Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for Human Behavioural Evolution, a department of the Leibniz Centre of Archaeology (LEIZA). Since 2003 he teaches Early Prehistory, zooarchaeology and taphonomy at the University of Mainz.

Lutz Kindler has led and participated in field excavations and projects in Europe, Westen Asia and Africa. Actually, his main research focus centres around Neanderthal ecology, hunting pressure and early forms of anthropogenic landscape alterations in Interglacial environments on the Northern European Plain as well as the zooarchaeology and taphonomy of the Early to Middle Pleistocene sites of Melka Kunture, Ethiopia.

Title: Reconstructing Neanderthal Ecology at the Middle Palaeolithic Site of Neumark-Nord (Germany)

Abstract: Lutz will present together with Professor Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser - please read the above abstract

Name: Professor Sonja Jähnig, Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Germany

Biography: Sonja Jähnig leads the Department Ecosystem and Community Ecology at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) and is a Professor of Aquatic Ecogeography at Humboldt University in Berlin. After her doctorate at the University of Duisburg-Essen, she completed postdocs at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan and the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt before joining IGB as a research group leader in 2014.

Sonja’s research focuses on global change effects in river ecosystems, freshwater biodiversity and conservation. She develops interdisciplinary models to study global change impacts, combining hydrology, community ecology, conservation, and habitat modeling. Analyses range from river sections and catchments to continental river networks and global-scale impacts, examining diverse groups of organisms from invertebrates to fish to freshwater megafauna.

Title: Restoring Rivers and Floodplains: Navigating the Challenges

Abstract: River ecosystems suffer escalating threats, including overexploitation, dam construction, habitat degradation, pollution, and biological invasions. Their distinct landscape position and connectivity characteristics make them particularly vulnerable to adverse impacts but also serve as powerful entry points for remediation. Restoring free-flowing rivers with (more) natural river dynamics paired with transitioning from location-based restoration measures to systematic multiple-purpose planning represent most promising initiatives. Presenting these strategies (and some amendments such as the use of umbrella species and the cultural values of biodiversity to reconnect people with nature), I will discuss their potential for instigating positive changes. Taking a distinct river-centric perspective, I will show ongoing trends, potential solutions, but also the persisting challenges that must be addressed to facilitate meaningful progress.

Name: Brenna Forester, Endangered Species Biologist, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Colorado, USA

Biography: Brenna Forester is an applied landscape and molecular ecologist focused on conserving biodiversity in a period of rapid global change. Her research areas include applications of genomic data to improve decision-making under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, conservation genomics of imperiled amphibians, and evaluation and deployment of proxies for genetic diversity to inform conservation management. She completed her MSc at Western Washington University, her PhD at Duke University, and a David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship at Colorado State University. She is an Endangered Species Biologist with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in the Branch of Species Status Assessment Science Support.

Title: The importance of adaptive capacity to species persistence in the face of anthropogenic change

Abstract: Adaptive capacity, the ability to accommodate, cope with, or respond to shifting environmental conditions, fundamentally determines whether and how species will persist or decline in response to environmental change. The complexity of anthropogenic change combined with the interaction of evolutionary, demographic, and dispersal processes makes forecasting adaptive responses challenging. In this talk, I will review some of the most common approaches for inferring local adaptation and adaptive shifts from genomic data, which are increasingly being used to inform vulnerability assessments and conservation management. I will also discuss the need to integrate across methods and data types to account for the complex dynamics of adaptive responses. Finally, I will touch on the importance of developing and validating proxies for adaptive capacity and genetic diversity, given that genomic data remain scarce in at-risk species. These indicators of adaptive capacity and intraspecific diversity can be deployed rapidly and at large scales, which is critical given the magnitude of the biodiversity crisis.

Name: Associate Professor Anastasiia Zymeroieva, Polissia National University, Ukraine

Biography: Associate Professor (PhD) Anastasiia Zymaroieva, Head of the Department of Ecology at Polissia National University (Ukraine), is an ecologist specializing in the spatial distribution of biodiversity, nature conservation, and agroecology. She is also a senior researcher at the Chornobyl Radiation Ecological Biosphere Reserve, where she participates in studies on biodiversity, fire risk in the exclusion zone, and its consequences. Anastasiia Zymaroieva was awarded ‘Young Scientist of 2021’ by the Ukrainian Parliament for her study "Modeling of spatial and temporal variation of productive potential and biodiversity of agrolandscapes of Polissia and Forest-Steppe zones of Ukraine". During 2022–2023, Anastasiia worked in Denmark as a Ukrainian Research Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS), collaborating with the Center for Biodiversity Dynamics in a Changing World (BIOCHANGE), Department of Biology, Aarhus University. Her recent studies have focused on long-term patterns of animal diversity in different regions of Ukraine, with an emphasis on climatic changes in the bird fauna and anthropogenic drivers of change in the fish fauna.

Title: Vegetation recovery after disturbances in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone

Abstract: After the Chornobyl disaster in 1986, the sharp reduction in anthropogenic activity created favorable conditions for the restoration and recovery of natural ecosystems within the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ). The purpose of the study was to investigate the characteristics of natural succession in former anthropogenic sites, as well as after megafires and soil disturbances caused by the Russian invasion of the territory. The vegetation cover of the CEZ has changed significantly since the accident, mainly due to an increase in forest area as a result of the afforestation of abandoned farmlands. This type of succession is also common in the former settlements, where forest formation is also occurring.The frequent fires in the CEZ have a substantial impact on the state and composition of the vegetation in the region. In areas affected by fires, forest species are being replaced by synanthropic, mostly ruderal species, many of which are invasive. Research on vegetation recovery in the areas where the Russian military had created a defense line showed that vascular plant species diversity on the primitive fortifications gradually increased, accompanied by changes in the structure of the vegetation.

Keywords: vegetation cover, succession, megafires, afforestation, invasive species.

Name: Professor Yadvinder Malhi, University of Oxford, UK

Biography: Yadvinder Malhi is Professor of Ecosystem Science at the University of Oxford and Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery. His work focuses on understanding and maintaining a flourishing biosphere in the context of global change, and over much of his career has particularly focused on tropical rainforests, but more recently has ranged across ecosystems including savannas, tropical atolls and arctic tundra. His work also explores nature resilience and recovery in the Anthropocene from a variety of perspectives. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and Past-President of the British Ecological Society and the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation.                 

Title: The ecological energetics of a novel biosphere

Abstract: Vernadsky, the first scientist of the biosphere, described it as “a planetary membrane for capturing, storing and transforming solar energy”.  Almost every living organism and organism function in the biosphere is united, and can be compared, by the cascade of captured sunshine through trophic levels and functional and taxonomic groups. But beyond powerful imagery, can an energetics approach to ecosystems yield a practical contribution to understanding the functioning of a novel biosphere and be a tool for assessing novel ecosystems and the effectiveness of nature recovery? This talk explores this potential with a focus on plants, birds and mammals, the best documented taxonomic groups, in the context of terrestrial ecosystems. I draw on examples from intact and logged tropical forests in Borneo, and a broad regional examination of sub-Saharan Africa. An energetic approach to understanding life an earth promised to link biodiversity to ecosystem function at local, regional and regional and planetary scales. And along the way it can yield some surprising and provocative insights into our changing biosphere.

Web link: https://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/staff/ymalhi.html

Name: Professor Maria Dornelas, University of St Andrews, Scotland

Biography: Maria Dornelas is a Professor at the University of St Andrews and the Universidade de Lisboa. She is also a member of the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity. Her research focuses on quantifying biodiversity change and understanding the processes that shape it. Lately, she is particularly interested in understanding compositional turnover and the processes connecting change in diversity, function and environment. In her empirical work she often targets tropical systems and specifically coral reefs, but her work with the BioTIME database spans across realms and taxa. She combines ecological theory, synthesis of existing data, and fieldwork in her research.

Title: Putting a coral reef back together

Abstract: Compositional turnover is as a highly prevalent feature of contemporary biodiversity patterns. Here, I present a detailed look at the recovery from a sequence of extreme disturbances drastically changed the coral reefs around Jiigurru (aka Lizard island). A sequence of two cyclones and two mass bleaching events led to coral mortality rates of up to 98%. These devastating effects produced an opportunity to study the reassembly of coral assemblages. Using 3D maps of 21 sites around the island group, coupled with individual colony in situ annotations, we assessed the spatial and temporal variation in recovery paths over the past eight years. Collectively, we observed a five-fold increase in the number of colonies, and a doubling of the number of species since 2016. However, recovery was highly variable spatially, with some sites now having surpassed historical cover, abundance and species richness, while others have had much slower recovery paths. By individually tracking the fates of over 50,000 coral colonies, we are able to identify whether recruitment or survival are limiting recovery and driving these differences.

Name: Senior Lecturer Tom Pugh, Lund University, Sweden

Biography: Tom is Senior lecturer at Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science, Lund University and a Reader in Biosphere-Atmosphere Exchange at the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham. He is interested in interactions and feedbacks between the terrestrial biosphere, climate and people, with a particular focus on forest dynamics, questions which he primarily investigates using computer models and big data synthesis.

Tom completed his PhD at Lancaster University studying the effects of tropical rainforests and oil palm plantations on tropospheric chemistry. He then carried out a postdoc at Lancaster investigating the interactions between plants and urban air pollution. In 2012 he moved to IMK-IFU in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, where he broadened his horizons to work with global vegetation and climate models on questions of land-use change, tree mortality and food security. In 2016 he joined the University of Birmingham and in 2020 took up his current position at Lund University.

Title: Simulating novel forest ecosystems under environmental change

Abstract: The world’s forests are dynamic systems with long “memories”. They gradually move through different states as a result of the environmental conditions that they find themselves subjected to. In this talk I will look at how forests have changed over time, moving into states that are novel compared to the antecedent conditions, and how we are able to investigate these changes using dynamic vegetation modelling techniques. This will look both at how management has resulted in novel forest ecosystems compared to a few hundred years ago and how environmental change is pushing forests into new states, as well as the combinations of the two.

Name: Research Scientist Erica Newman, University of Texas at Austin, USA

Biography: Erica Newman is a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin and a visiting professor at James Madison University. After completing a Masters Degree in Physics at the University of Michigan, she shifted to more conservation-focused work. Beginning with her PhD work at the University of California, Berkeley, her work now integrates macroecology and disturbance ecology for the purpose of understanding dynamic biodiversity patterns across scales. She primarily works with an information-entropy based macroecological theory, the Maximum Entropy Theory of Ecology. Erica is currently working on tests and extensions of the theory, both through fieldwork and theory development. Disturbance ecology has been an equal focus in Erica’s career. She is a licensed Burn Boss and is a former wildlands firefighter, having conducted dozens of prescribed fires for savannah and prairie restoration. Her academic work in disturbance and wildfire has been used in California state wildfire policy.

Title: Towards a Dynamic Macroecology

Abstract: We search for generality across ecosystems, and find that generality in macroecological patterns. These may incorporate scaling and are independent of any particular mechanism within a given ecosystem. Patterns like the Species Area Relationship, the Species Abundance Distribution, and metabolic scaling distributions instead emerge due to statistical aggregation, indicating a need for statistical unification. An information-theoretic macroecology, called the Maximum Entropy Theory of Ecology unites spatial patterns, species diversity, and metabolic distributions within a single mathematical framework. Using this theory as a base, two unique advances have been made: (1) an ecological equation of state, which can accurately predict the relationships of species richness, metabolic rates, biomass, and total abundance together, which allows us to make predictions beyond simple bivariate relationships among these variables; and (2) DyMES, a dynamic, scale-entwined MaxEnt version of macroecology that allows simultaneous prediction of top-down and bottom-up effects across multiple physical scales. I will discuss both advances and applications to current ecological issues and future ecosystem prediction.