Kirsten Krüger
@kirstenkrueger.bsky.social
PhD-ing at @edfm-tum.bsky.social🌳 | Piecing together clues of forest disturbances, recovery, and human footprints🔍🌪🌱 | Remote sensing 🛰, mountain climbing ⛰, coffee-fueled science ☕️
☀️🌲💻 #FreieStelle! PhD in #Umweltwissenschaften, #Forstwissenschaften oder #Fernerkundung? Ausgewiesene Erfahrung als #DataScientist? Unsere Forschungsgruppe GIS sucht eine/-n wissenschaftliche/-n Mitarbeiter/-in für Fernerkundung und Machine Learning: apply.refline.ch/273855/1875/... #ScienceJobs
These moments, when you see 3 1/2 years of work finished on 133 pages 😁
New paper out today @currentbiology.bsky.social led by Toby Jackson and Lucy Beese shows the profound impact that liana cutting has on the structural recovery of logged tropical forests 📜 doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...
The first paper from my PhD is now out in the world 🌲📖 Modelling forest dynamics using IPMs and repeat lidar doi.org/10.1002/rse2...
🌿A century of vegetation change in temperate mountain forests shows that shifts in plant diversity were driven mainly by the cessation of human management, not by recent climate changes🌲 #ForestEcology #GlobalChange 👉️ buff.ly/zB0SyRJ
This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.
We're accepting proposals for our Special Feature! We invite scientists and practitioners to share experiences from management projects that didn't go to plan, but still provided important insights into how best to manage ecosystems and species🌱 ⏰Submit by 30th April More here👇 buff.ly/EXXBFsJ
It is kinda refreshing to see that scientific discourse not just takes places at (sometimes exclusive) conferences and in (slow) paper publications, but also in other spheres of the internet: treesinspace.com/2026/01/29/h... Thank you @markuseichhorn.bsky.social for this fodder for thoughts!
How I stopped believing in the biodiversity-ecosystem functioning consensus
The E120 Biodiversity Experiment at Cedar Creek in Minnesota, from their website. It all began with the best of intentions. By the time the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was published in 2005, th…
treesinspace.com
A small window into PhD grind time. Loaded with coffee ☕️, tea 🍵 and interesting papers 📄
Yey, a landscape science xkcd! 🤩🌎 A super reasonable question and great answer
Randall Munroe@xkcd.com · 5mo agoLandscape Features xkcd.com/3221/
![Comic. [Small panel overlaying large panel.] PERSON 1: What’s up with this weird landscape? PERSON 2 with ponytail: Oh, it was caused by… [Large panel is map of the United States with with red overlays denoting landscape phenomena. Mega-floods in the northwest, a plate tectonics speedrun on the west coast, volcanoes next to the west coast, water and time in the southwest, geology in the west, a supervolcano within the west, glaciers in the north, farming in the middle, rivers in the mideast, geology in between rivers and farming, ??? toward the northeast, farming on the east coast, continents colliding next to the east coast, ongoing disputes between limestone and water in the south of Florida, volcanoes in Hawaii, geology in Alaska with volcanoes and glaciers below.]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreihzjireqyhyztitogqi7khxntfzmhzmyqdfvycvl2qcf5yik4z5zm)
“we are trapping 21st-century minds inside 19th-century academic hierarchies.” This essay gets a lot right about problems with German science. I would add that the hierarchies and precarious contracts lead also to systemic abuse and scientific misconduct. open.substack.com/pub/realimag...
🔊Probably already one of my top 10 papers this year: @leoniegass.bsky.social compiled for 28 tree species high resolution forest regeneration maps across Germany from inventory data! 14.3% of forests have low regeneration density, 30.4% has low species richness 👉 doi.org/10.1111/1365...
Mapping the next forest generation reveals multiple regeneration gaps across German forests
Our study provides the first nationwide, high-resolution assessment of forest regeneration, offering a valuable baseline for monitoring forest development. The regeneration density and indicator maps...
doi.org
Super insightful synthesis led by @juditlecinadiaz.bsky.social on recovery dynamics post distrubances globally 🌍🌱 Main insight: - Most studies look at short-term recovery - Self-replacement is common across biomes, suggesting limited adaption catalyzer effects of disturbances
Rupert Seidl@rupertseidl.bsky.social · 5mo agoTogether with @juditlecinadiaz.bsky.social & @monicagturner.bsky.social, we synthesized studies on post-disturbance forest reorganization. Key insight: Self-replacement is common across biomes, i.e., disturbances act as catalysts of change only under specific conditions doi.org/10.1111/geb....
In recognition of us doing fuck all to reduce emissions, let me remind y'all that carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is useless unless we decarbonize drastically. rdcu.be/dbFbB
Carbon dioxide removal is not a current climate solution — we need to change the narrative
Drastically reduce emissions first, or carbon dioxide removal will be next to useless.
nature.com
Figure 1 in this paper is both informative and hillarious. The collider on self-perceived causal inference skill is too real
Julia M. Rohrer@dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 5mo agoYou need to bring in the same toolkit as in studies that try to establish causality without randomization. I know it sounds unfair, but I don’t make the rules. These situations are instances of post-treatment bias, if you want to read up on it as a psychologist:
I was priviliged enough to be part of this amazing study led by @mariapotterf.bsky.social! We see strong signs of post-distrubance regeneration across disturbance hotspots in central Europe 🌱🏆 BUT the species composition of the regeneration is not well adapted to future climate change 🌍🌡️
Global Change Biology@globalchangebio.bsky.social · 5mo agoTree Regeneration After Unprecedented Forest Disturbances in Central Europe Is Robust but Maladapted to Future Climate Change 🔗 buff.ly/M7hzSsm
In Central Europe, forest management shapes post-disturbance recovery mostly through what’s left behind (disturbance legacies 🪵🌱) than impacting forest growth rates 📈 + Set-aside forests regrow canopy height as fast as managed forests New paper out in ForEcolMngt 🌳 doi.org/10.1016/j.fo...
I knew global remote-sensing products—especially forest maps—could differ, but I didn’t realize just how much. 🌍🌲🛰️ When comparing 10 different global forest cover datasets, they overlapped in only 26% of the area. 🤯 doi.org/10.1016/j.on... -> Choose your forest map wisely I say!
Redirecting
doi.org
PhD defense traditions need to start at some point. We kicked off some new ones at the @edfm-tum.bsky.social chair 😉 First in line -> the one and only @christinadollinger.bsky.social 🥳 Congrats to this amazing defence Dr.Dollinger 💪🚀
Edge effects from deforestation in the Chaco! -> New paper out in @globalchangebio.bsky.social with Seba Torrella & @matthiasbaumann.bsky.social Marie Pratzer @aguiarse86.bsky.social @mariapiquerr.bsky.social Ruben Ginzburg Gregorio Gavier Pizarro @tkuemmerle.bsky.social tinyurl.com/2nh7kjkj
Killer tortoises! I showed this in my island biology lecture yesterday and it shocked the students 😱 Here's the paper describing the behaviour: www.cell.com/current-biol... 🧪🌏
Found an additional graphic that gets even more of these quotes together. I've kept "I hate myself, I hate clover, and I hate bees" pinned above my desk since I first started studying evolutionary biology as an undergraduate. So relatable to get extremely frustrated with your study system.
SK Winnicki, PhD 🏳️⚧️@skwinnicki.bsky.social · 6mo agoHappy birthday, Chuck. Proud to carry on your legacy of studying evolutionary biology while going through it
Forests need to change to keep or take in more carbon! Fantastic and insightful paper led by the genius @christinadollinger.bsky.social
Christina Dollinger@christinadollinger.bsky.social · 6mo agoForests are reorganizing in their composition and structure in response to climate change - will they be able to maintain their carbon? Turns out: yes - they even sequestered more carbon than resilient forests! New paper out in Global Biogeochemical Cycles 🔄💎 @agu.org dx.doi.org/10.1029/2025...
As climate and disturbance regimes change, forest reorganization is key to maintain the forest carbon sink. Great new work led by @christinadollinger.bsky.social w/ @monicagturner.bsky.social, @akkym.bsky.social and many others. dx.doi.org/10.1029/2025...
Save the date! 48th New Phytologist Symposium: Forest interactions 📅 13–16 October 2026 📍 Leysin, Switzerland www.newphytologist.org/events/48-nps #PlantScience
Forest interactions
Explore plant interactions in forest environments at all levels from micro- to macro-scales and across the whole spectrum of plant biology.
newphytologist.org
The mainstream aim to restore “native reference ecosystems” Reminds me of people of my age who go to see touring bands from their youth Trying to recreate something that never quite existed And has limited relevance in a changing world doi.org/10.1111/ecog...
Future restoration should enhance ecological complexity and emergent properties at multiple scales
Ecological restoration has a paradigm of re-establishing ‘indigenous reference' communities. One resulting concern is that focussing on target communities may not necessarily create systems which fun...
doi.org
Climate warming is generally making trees grow faster, but the greater effect is that tree growth is becoming more unpredictable, creating a threat to the stability of forests. New paper by Li & He (2026). 🧪🌏🌐🌲🌳
Variation in Tree Growth Increases With Global Warming
In recent decades, considerable research has focused on the long-term trend of tree growth rates under global warming, yet little attention has been paid to trends in high-frequency tree growth varia...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
