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

  • 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

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.

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Tropical deforestation: elections or bad governance?

2023-05-23

Our recent article in Biological Conservation about the role of elections as drivers of tropical deforestation has received a thoughtful correspondence by Troumbis (2023).

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EuropaBON deliverable on novel technologies for biodiversity monitoring

2023-05-05

Daniel Kissling and Maria Lumbierres contributed to a report on novel methods for biodiversity monitoring.

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Special Issue "LiDAR Metrics for Habitat Condition Indicators"

2023-04-13

W. Daniel Kissling, Yifang Shi and Jinhu Wang are guest editors for a Special Issue on "LiDAR Metrics for Habitat Condition Indicators" in the journal Remote Sensing.

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Plants on Mauritius lose their seed dispersers

2023-03-14

A new paper in Nature Communications shows that introduced species are not able to replace extinct seed dispersers on Mauritius.

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EBV workflow workshop summary

2023-03-07

A short summary of our workshop on Essential Biodiversity Variable workflows is available on the EuropaBON website.

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Building digital twins of ecosystems

2023-02-27

A 20 million euro grant from the Dutch Science Foundation will facilitate the building of digital twins of ecosystems.

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Events

ma22mei

Biodiversity & Ecosystem eScience Conference

Seville - Spain

The Biodiversity & Ecosystem eScience (BEeS) conference is organised by LifeWatch ERIC with a focus on “Threats and challenges to biodiversity and ecosystem conservation from an eScience perspective”. More details here.


di23mei

NWO Life conference

Egmond aan zee - Ther Netherlands

An annual scientific conference covering all disciplines in the Dutch Life Sciences. Researchers at all scientific research institutes in the Netherlands, in all career phases including master students, are warmly invited to join and contribute to the programme. See conference details here.


ma21aug

14th European Ornithologists' Union Congress

Lund - Sweden

The meeting is open to all ornithologists in Europe, with a wide breadth of talks and plenaries. See details here.


ma04sep

Open Earth Observation workshop 2023

Bolzano - Italy

This conference and workshop will cover Earth Observations and geospatial data —and their derived information— monitoring regional, national and global environmental and climate targets proposed by the ambitious European Green Deal. More information here.


di12sep

52nd Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland

Leipzig - Germany

Ecologists from across the world will gather during the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland on 12-16 September 2023 in Leipzig, hosted by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig. See here for details.

 


di10okt

Global Conference on Biodiversity and Monitoring

Montreal - Canada

The Global Conference on Biodiversity and Monitoring is organized by GEO BON and its partners between 10-13 October 2023 in Montreal, Canada. The conference will offer a venue for sharing and exchanging scientific and traditional knowledge related to biodiversity change, from genes to ecosystems; the associated contributions to people, across all sectors of society; and its conservation, sustainable use and shared benefits.