J (Jasper) Steenvoorden MSc

I have always been fascinated by landscape-scale patterning and structure of natural ecosystems. Why do natural ecosystems look the way they do? How did the structure and/or patterning of natural ecosystems come into being? What does this say about their functioning? 

My research interest lies in evaluating and understanding the role of landscape-scale patterning and structure on ecosystem functioning, and finding ways to quantify their spatiotemporal dynamics so that we might better understand how natural ecosystems might respond to environmental changes. While my current research focuses on peatlands, I am broadly interested in:

1) development of remote sensing methods for monitoring natural ecosystems,
2) understanding the effect of climate change and other disturbances on natural ecosystems,
3) evaluating the role of landscape characteristics (e.g. vegetation patterns and refugia) as ecological indicators for the vulnerability and resilience of natural ecosystems to environmental change.

I am currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Plant Ecology & Nature Conservation Group (PEN) at Wageningen University. Here, I predominantly employ remote sensing to develop ecological indicators for mapping and monitoring restoration success in multiple Swedish peatlands under the Predpeat project in cooperation with Uppsala University.