Biodiversity & Macroecology

Studying geo-ecosystems and the distribution of life on Earth

Biogeography & Macroecology

The Biogeography & Macroecology (BIOMAC) lab is a research group at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), the Netherlands. We are part of the Department Theoretical and Computational Ecology (TCE) within the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED). The central aim of our work is to quantify how biodiversity varies across space and time, how it interacts with the abiotic components of the Earth system, and how responses of species and ecosystems to changing environmental conditions can be predicted and forecasted.

The group comprises permanent staff members (associate and assistant professors), support staff, scientific developers, data scientists, postdoctoral researchers and PhD students. We work at the interface of ecology, Earth science, informatics and data science, and cover topics in biodiversity, geodiversity, conservation, physical geography, monitoring, policy and global biodiversity change. Please read more about our research and our teaching, have a look at our news page, or get in touch with our lab members.

Selected publications

  • Polman, E.M.N., Seijmonsbergen, A.C., Versteegh, H. & Kissling, W.D. (2024): Global geodiversity components are not equally represented in UNESCO Global Geoparks. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 382: 20230054. [ABSTRACT] [DATA]

  • Gonzalez, A., ..., Kissling, W.D., ...(2023): A global biodiversity observing system to unite monitoring and guide action. Nature Ecology & Evolution 7: 1947–1952. [ABSTRACT] [PRESS RELEASE]

  • Kissling, W.D., Shi, Y., Koma, Z., Meijer, C., Ku, O., Nattino, F., Seijmonsbergen, A.C. & Grootes, M.W. (2022): Laserfarm — A high-throughput workflow for generating geospatial data products of ecosystem structure from airborne laser scanning point clouds. Ecological Informatics 72: 101836. [ABSTRACT]

  • Zhao, Z., Koulouzis, S., Bianchi, R., Farshidi, S., Shi, Z., Xin, R., Wang, Y., Li, N., Shi, Y., Timmermans, J. & Kissling, W.D. (2022): Notebook-as-a-VRE (NaaVRE): from private notebooks to a collaborative cloud virtual research environment. Software: Practice and Experience 52: 1947–1966. [ABSTRACT] [Featured Cover]

  • Allan, J.R., Possingham, H.P., Atkinson, S.C., Waldron, A., Di Marco, M., Butchart, S.H.M., Adams, V.M., Kissling, W.D., Worsdell, T., Sandbrook, C., Gibbon, G., Kumar, K., Mehta, P., Maron, M., Williams, B.A., Jones, K.R., Wintle, B.A., Reside, A.E. & Watson, J.E.M. (2022): The minimum land area requiring conservation attention to safeguard biodiversity. Science 376: 1094–1101. [ABSTRACT] [PERSPECTIVE] [PRESS RELEASE]

News

Vacancy Postdoc Geospatial Ecology

2024-03-16

We are looking for an ambitious Postdoc in Geospatial Ecology who can contribute to the building of Digital Twins of ecosystems.

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Geodiversity special issue

2024-02-13

Read this new special issue on ‘Geodiversity for science and society’

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New report on the state of the world's plants and fungi

2023-10-11

This new report takes an in-depth look at the worldwide drivers and patterns of plant and fungal diversity, provides new insights into extinction risk, and identifies critical knowledge gaps and how to address them.

Read more


Events

ma25mrt

Empowering Biodiversity Research III

Leiden - The Netherlands

The Benelux Biodiversity Informatics community and partners are pleased to invite you to the Empowering Biodiversity Research conference, EBR III, taking place on March 25-26th 2024 in Naturalis, Leiden, the Netherlands. More details are here.


wo27mrt

ARISE day 2024

Leiden - The Netherlands

The ARISE day will provide insights into the development of a research infrastructure for species identification from digital sources and eDNA. See the program here.


ma27mei

EuropaBON's Final Stakeholder Conference

Brussels - Belgium

This final EuropaBON confernce is showcasing the achievements & the wider EuropaBON network. Agenda & registration.