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Speaker: Marc Metzger
Marc.Metzger<at>wur.nl
Wageningen University Department of Plant Sciences, PO Box 432, 6702 AK Wageningen,
The Netherlands
Title of the talk: European vulnerability to global change
(pdf: 8MB)
Biosketch
Marc was born and raised in Nijmegen. For many years he was actively involved in a local Scout group, including five years leading a team of adults in organizing activities and camping trips for different age-groups. Here he adopted the motto: Search for the bends in the straight path. Set out a direction, make a plan, persist in getting there, but at the same time enjoy the journey.
During his biology study Marc became interested in the interaction between abiotic, biotic and cultural components determining landscapes, habitats and biodiversity. This resulted in a full year of research at the Wageningen research institute Alterra, assessing the potential for Dutch nature target types in a catchment in The Netherlands. Expert rules were combined with hydrological scenarios and soil information to using potential distribution of vegetation types and habitats.
Having enjoyed the independence and challenge of conducting research, Marc decided to pursue an academic career. The PhD position within the EU project ATEAM appealed to him because it would allow him to work in a multidisciplinary and international environment. Within the project, Marc enjoyed working with scientists and stakeholders from different disciplines, sometimes struggling to find common ground, but usually succeeding in the end.
A major component of his PhD work consisted of synthesizing outputs from a suite of ecosystem models for biodiversity, agriculture, forestry, hydrology and vegetation. Outputs were analyzed using alternative scenarios of global change and summarized for different regions of Europe. Marc coordinated the development of an interactive CD-Rom containing the results from the ATEAM project. Scientific publications are currently in review.
An unexpected element in his PhD was the intensive collaboration with landscape ecologists form Alterra, developing a statistically derived classification of the European environment. Their use for the stratification would be to place field observations in a European context. This collaboration has led to an increased insight that the current top-down assessments need to be linked to more detailed regional or field processes. This could be accomplished by placing randomly selected regional samples in a European context.
Marc is expected to defend his PhD thesis in November 2005. He is currently looking for a research position related to European environmental issues. Specific research interests include: multivariate environmental classification; linking landscape and continental scales; regional impacts of global change; global change and landscape ecology.
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