Maarten van Strien - Personal Homepage

Organisational unit: Landscape Dynamics Landscape Ecology Phone: +41 44 7392 819 Fax: +41 44 7392 215 Room: Bi HL E 40 E-Mail: Address: Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL Zürcherstrasse 111 8903 Birmensdorf

Curriculum Vitae

Since 2009 PhD at the Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Rolf Holderegger (WSL) and co-supervised by PD Dr. Janine Bolliger (WSL) and Prof. Dr. Jaboury Ghazoul (Ecosystem Management, ETH Zürich).

2008 Internship at the Spatial Ecology Group of the University of Lausanne. I wrote a spatial modelling protocol based on current best practice methods. Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Antoine Guisan.

2007 Internship at the Environmental Protection Agency of Queensland, Australia. Study on predicting the effects of climate change on rainforest vegetation communities in Australia. Supervisor: Dr. A. Accad.

2006 Fieldwork for MSc thesis in the Greater Makalali Private Game Reserve, South Africa. Supervisors: Dr. ir. Ignas Heitkönig and Audrey Delsink.

2005-2007 Master’s degree in biology (Cum Laude) from the Wageningen University, The Netherlands. Topic of Master thesis: 'Predicting grazer distribution with grass quality and quantity parameters'. Supervisor: Dr. ir. Ignas Heitkönig (Resource Ecology Group, Wageningen University). The thesis was awarded with the Alfred Russel Wallace Award for best thesis in 2006.

2000-2005 Bachelor’s degree in biology from the Wageningen University, The Netherlands. Specialization: Ecology.

PhD project

Modelling the influence of landscape elements on gene flow in a fragmented agricultural area.

I will be working on module 3 of the ENHANCE project. Working with genetic data, I will evaluate the relationship between landscape structural connectivity and species-specific functional connectivity. Special emphasis will be given to the effects of 'ecological compensation areas' on gene flow. Furthermore, I will be developing predictive spatial distribution models, which can be used to predict the gene flow in a landscape. An important aspect in this is the up-scaling of the models from a local to a regional (national) level.

The genetic data for the project will be collected from several Arthropod species in the Oberaargau region of Switzerland. Preliminary testing of the models will be done on existing genetic datasets. This will be done in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Jochen Jaeger (Concordia University, Canada) and Dr. Urs Kamm.

Publications

Accad, A., Strien, M.J. van, Heitkönig, I.M.A., (2008) Are the Rainforest Vegetation Communities of Southeast Queensland Adequately Protected? Poster & paper, Queensland Spatial Conference 2008, 17-19 July 2008, Surfers Paradise, Australia.

Strien, M.J. van, Accad, A., Heitkönig, I.M.A., (2007) Are the Rainforest Vegetation Communities of Southeast Queensland Adequately Protected? A preliminary overview of the modelling process. Poster presentation, Queensland Rainforest Forum, 25-27 June 2007, Brisbane, Australia.