Who are we?

We are a team of researchers from the Ecosystem Management group at ETH Zürich. We work on understanding and evaluating solutions for complex socio-ecological systems.

Research themes include agro-ecological management, forest and landscape restoration, ecological functions in landscape mosaics, and socio-technical transitions. We are also interested in decision-making processes that shape environmental outcomes.

Our recent work in Scotland is pursuing systems-orientated approaches by which land-based climate mitigation can be delivered at scale. This includes consideration of integrated land management, wood-based bio-economies, and innovative financing instruments - explored through participatory engagement across public, private, and non-governmental actors.

Our team

Our partner

Bioregioning Tayside

Bioregioning Tayside aims at bringing people in Tayside together to build community resilience in the face of:

  • global heating – with major implications for survival of life as we know it,

  • a sixth mass extinction of plants and animals driven by us, which is collapsing biodiversity and threatening the food webs we depend on

  • a broken economic model – which is fuelling the climate crisis and biodiversity collapse and resulting in increasing social injustice and mental ill health

They aim to build that community resilience through the concept of a Bioregion.

A Bioregion is a geographic area defined not by political or economic boundaries but through its natural features – its geology; topography; climate; soils; hydrology and watersheds; agriculture; biodiversity, flora and fauna and vegetation.

Bioregioning re-connects people with those natural systems, and each other, through the places where they live, enabling deeper understanding of the interdependence between them and human flourishing