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Dr. Niklaus Zimmermann - Personal Homepage
I lead a research team around the topics of monitoring and modelling pattern and dynamics at the landscape scale,
mainly of the European Alps. Funding somes primarily from EU- and National Science Foundation grants, from
SAEFL and WSL, and occasionally from
US-NSF and USDA Forest Service. We use mostly GIS and remote sensing, as well as our own programs combined with
mathematical and statistical data analyses. Personally, I am involved in a series of ongoing projects.
My own research has four center points: 1) GIS based modelling of habitat distribution and of biophysical
properties at the landscape scale; 2) Scaling of biogeochemistry models from stands to landscapes;
3) remote sensing based monitoring and modelling of landscape pattern and its change over time; and
4) development and improvements of gap dynamic models for improved simulation of forest dynamics. Research InterestsI am specifically interested in vegetation ecology, vegetation dynamics, and plant species diversity at various spatial and temporal scales. In the past few years, my research has focused on modelling biophysical constraints of species and community distribution along spatial (real) and theoretical gradients, and on modeling species competitive dynamics on large spatial scales. This research required the interaction of plant ecophysiology, ecological theory, biophysical ecology and involved mainly GIS-analyses, programming and statistics. Additionally, I have a strong sympathy for field floristics, species diversity theories, and ecological theories in general. AdressSwiss Federal Research Institute WSL Secretarytel: +41.(0)44-739-2579 |