Biogeography & 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 and abiotic components of the Earth system vary across space and time, how they interact, 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

  • Gonzalez, A., ..., Kissling, W.D., ...(2023): A global biodiversity observing system to unite monitoring and guide action. Nature Ecology & Evolution in press. [ABSTRACT]

  • 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]

  • De Groeve, J., Kusumoto, B., Koene, E., Kissling, W.D., Seijmonsbergen, A.C., Hoeksema, B.W., Yasuhara, M., Norder, S.J., Cahyarini, S.Y., van der Geer, A., Meijer, H.J.M., Kubota, Y. & Rijsdijk, K.F. (2022): Global raster dataset on historic coastline positions and shelf sea extents since the Last Glacial Maximum. Global Ecology & Biogeography 31: 21622171. [ABSTRACT]

News

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


A global observatory for monitoring biodiversity

2023-08-28

An interconnected worldwide system of biodiversity observation networks is needed to coordinate monitoring worldwide and to track international biodiversity targets.

Read more


New paper on how satellite remote sensing can contribute to global biodiversity monitoring

2023-08-17

Our new paper in Ecological Indicators provides our viewpoint on how satellite remote sensing can contribute to monitoring global biodiversity change

Read more


EBV workshop report published

2023-07-11

Read our report on making the first steps towards designing the freshwater, marine and terrestrial Essential Biodiversity Variable (EBV) workflows for the European Biodiversity Observation Network.

Read more


Daniel Kissling designated as the Netherlands' most prolific biodiversity researcher

2023-05-23

In a new report about biodiversity research in the Netherlands and worldwide, W. Daniel Kissling from the BIOMAC lab has been designated as the most prolific author in biodiversity research in the Netherlands, based on scholarly output.

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 reserach infrastructure for species identification from digital sources and eDNA. See the ARISE website for updates.