Wolfgang Buermann

Wolfgang Buermann is Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and also holds a Professor position in the Institute of Geography at the Augsburg University in Germany. His research is broadly aimed towards a better understanding of climate ecosystem interactions under a changing climate. With his work, Wolfgang Buermann has been able to make a significant contribution towards a better understanding of vegetation dynamics under the conditions of climate change. This is evidenced by publishing over 70 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters including in the premier journals Science, Nature, and PNAS, and through winning more than $1.5M in research funding from US (NASA), EU and UK funding agencies.

He has a strong focus in the monitoring and understanding of emerging ecosystem and carbon cycle responses to climate change, especially in northern latitudes, combining satellite Earth observations and modeling approaches. He also conducts biogeographic studies, in collaboration with biologists and epidemiologists, to better understand pattern of biodiversity and emerging infectious diseases and how these are affected under climate change.

Recent Publications

Buermann, W. et al. Widespread seasonal compensation effects of spring warming on northern plant productivity. Nature, 562, 110–114, 2018.

E Gloor, C Wilson, MP Chipperfield, F Chevallier, W Buermann, et al. Tropical land carbon cycle responses to 2015/16 El Niño as recorded by atmospheric greenhouse gas and remote sensing data. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 373, 20170302, 2018.

Buermann, W., C. Beaulieu, B. Parida, D. Medvigy, G. J. Collatz, J. Sheffield and J. L. Sarmiento, Climate-driven shifts in continental net primary production implicated as a driver of a recent abrupt increase in the land carbon sink, Biogeosci., 13, 1597–1607, 2016.

O’Sullivan, M, A Rap, CL Reddington, DV Spracklen, M Gloor and W. Buermann, Small global effect on terrestrial net primary production due to increased fossil fuel aerosol emissions from East Asia since the turn of the century. Geophys. Res. Lett., 43 , 8060-8067, 2016.

Buermann, W., B.R.Parida, M. Jung, G. MacDonald, C.J. Tucker and M. Reichstein, Recent shift in Eurasian boreal forest greening response may be associated with warmer and drier summers, Geophys. Res. Lett., doi: 10.1002/2014GL059450, 2014.

Guay, K.C., P.S.A. Beck, L.T. Berner, S.J. Goetz, A. Baccini and W. Buermann, Vegetation productivity patterns at high northern latitudes: a multi-sensor satellite data assessment. Glob. Change Biol., 20, 3147–3158, 2014.

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Buermann
Chair of Physical Geography and Climate Science
Institute of Geography
Augsburg University
Alter Postweg 118
86159 Augsburg
Tel. +49 (0)821 598 2662
Email: wolfgang.buermann@geo.uni-augsburg.de

 

Paul Barber

Recent Courses

EE BIOL 109 – Introduction to Marine Science
EE BIOL 97X – PEERS Forum: Pathways in Science
EE BIOL 97X – PEERS Forum: Pathways in Science

Education

B.S., Ecol. & Evol. Bio., University of Arizona 1991
Ph.D., Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley 1998

Research Interests

Our laboratory integrates genetics, ecology, oceanography and geology to understand the processes that promote speciation in marine environments, creating marine biodiversity hotspots. For the past decade, we have focused on the fish and invertebrates of the coral reefs of the Coral Triangle, the global epicenter of marine biodiversity. Through a comparative approach, we are examining the relative importance of tectonic history, physical oceanography, and organismal ecologies in limiting genetic connectivity and promoting evolution and lineage diversification. Our recent work focuses on integrating empirical models of connectivity with predictions from geographically explicit models of contemporary and historical ocean currents. We work closely with conservation organizations such as Conservation International to translate our basic science into information that can help guide conservation planning, protecting these endangered reef ecosystems. We are also interested in the role of natural selection and adaptation in shaping population genetic patterns, particularly the role of the genetic basis of energetic performance of mitochondrial in size selective mortality of marine larvae.

 

 

Claudia Flores

Alison Hewitt

Jennie Dean

Jennie Dean joined the IoES in August 2016 to run the Corporate Partners Program. In this role, she recruits and maintains partnerships with businesses interested in corporate sustainability. She connects these external partners with UCLA faculty, staff, and students to answer the most pressing questions in the field of sustainability.

In January 2018, Jennie began splitting her time with managing the new Blue Prosperity program. This cross-campus initiative is building a toolkit for small island developing states (SIDS) to help grow their economies and enhance economic opportunities for their people by drawing on the available natural and ocean resources sustainably. In this role she oversees faculty and student teams conducting evaluations of technical, administrative, legal and financial capacity of SIDS.

She has a strong background in facilitating relationships with external partners, curating impactful engagement events, and producing thoughtful and thorough research reports.  Prior to coming to UCLA, she spent most of the last decade in Washington, DC where she worked for the federal government and non-profits on conservation issues. Her educational background is in environmental management with a master’s degree from Duke University and bachelor’s from Princeton University. When not on-campus, you can find her at the beach or hiking in the Santa Monica mountains.

Jennie left IoES in July 2022.

Alex Hon-Tsen Yu

Yifang Zhu

Education

B.S., Tsinghua University, Environmental Engineering
Ph.D., Environmental Health Sciences, UCLA

Research Interests

Dr. Zhu’s research interest is primarily in the field of environmental exposure assessment and aerosol science and technology. Specifically, she is interested in determining the data necessary to fill the knowledge gap in quantitative exposure/risk assessments on vehicular emitted ultrafine particles that have shown higher toxicity than larger particles on a unit mass basis. Her current research focuses on identifying key factors that affect human exposure to ultrafine particles on and near roadways by measuring and modeling their emissions, transport, and transformation in the atmosphere as well as into the in-cabin and indoor environments. These research efforts are supported by two prestigious national awards, the National Science Foundation (NSF)?s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award and the Walter Rosenblith New Investigator Award from the Health Effects Institute.

Biography

Dr. Zhu joined the Environmental Health Sciences Department in UCLA School of Public Health as an Assistant Professor in 2010. Before taking this post, Dr. Zhu has worked as an Assistant Professor in Environmental Engineering Department at Texas A&M University-Kingsville since 2006.

Ying Zhen

Virginia Zaunbrecher

Virginia Zaunbrecher is the Managing Director of the Center for Tropical Research at UCLA.  As a lawyer with a science background, she works to translate the Center’s scientific findings into policy and regulation.  She currently focuses on incorporating diverse data streams into decision making on conservation in Central Africa.  This includes incorporation of genetic diversity and socio-economic data and exploring the use of decision support tools.  Her previous work focused on incorporating predictive techniques and decision analysis into chemical regulation.  She also designed and managed aid and development projects in Africa and Asia for nearly five years.

Zaunbrecher also helps oversee the Congo Basin Institute (CBI)—UCLA’s first foreign affiliate located in Cameroon.  She manages partnerships for CBI, and represents the academic and research institutions on the Advisory Council of the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP).

Education

University of California, Berkeley, J.D., certificate in law and technology

University of Wisconsin-Madison, B.S. in Molecular Biology and History with Comprehensive Honors and with Distinction

Felipe Zapata

My research examines the evolution, ecology, and conservation of biodiversity. More specifically, I aim to understand how environmental and ecological factors interact to shape organismal responses and evolutionary change at different phylogenetic, temporal, and spatial scales. To this end, I use interdisciplinary approaches to integrate from genes to clades using tools from field biology, genomics, evolutionary biology, phylogenetics, population genetics, biogeography, museum science, ecophysiology, chemical ecology, and computational biology. My overarching goal is to study across levels of biological organization to address fundamental questions about the processes that generate diversity in nature and inform applied issues to preserve the environment.