Current members
Naia Morueta-Holme (PI)
I am a biogeographer interested the patterns, drivers and conservation of biodiversity. I am particularly interested in the role of humans in influencing the distribution and diversity of species, especially plants and birds. I received my PhD from Aarhus University in 2014 and was a Villum postdoctoral fellow at the University of California – Berkeley. I am Associate Professor at the Section for Biodiversity, Globe Institute, at University of Copenhagen.
Cristina Rueda Uribe (postdoc)
Cristina is interested in how anthropogenic pressures challenge biotic interactions and the persistence of natural communities. As a postdoc in the ATEMPO project, she is researching about land cover and climate change effects on plant and bird species assemblages in Greenland and Denmark.
Maj Christensen (PhD student)
Maj is pursuing her PhD in vegetation changes of Greenland as part of the ATEMPO project. She is using field resurveys to document changes in the composition and function of plant communities the past century to understand the mediators of responses to climate change.
Kasper Blomsterberg (MSc student)
Kasper is doing his MSc thesis on climate change impacts on Greenland plant communities. He is using herbarium collections to study thermophilization trends at regional scales.
Freja Top (Research Assistant)
Freja is a key support to our research projects with geolocation of historical vegetation data, functional trait measurements, and other data acquisition.
Txapi (lab pet)
I am an Insta360 Pro2 camera, assisting the lab to capture 360 degree images in the field for studies exploring the usability of ground-based imagery to quantify local habitat complexity and improve models of biodiversity
Past Members
PhD students
Rafael Schouten. PhD 2024: Causal drivers of island extinctions. Main supervisor: Michael Borregaard. Now consultant at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research.
Charlie Davison. PhD 2022: Land use and climate change effects on avian biodiversity. Charlie came from a background in tropical ecology, mostly studying mammals in Borneo, and have carried out many months of remote fieldwork. For his PhD, Charlie examined the state of the land-use change and biodiversity literature, and investigated the interactive effects of land-use change and climate change on bird communities in Denmark. Now Postdoc at Aarhus University.
MSc students
Ibon Barrasa. MSc 2025: Reassessing climate’s role in the Late Pleistocene extinction of Proboscideans through Species Distribution
Modelling.
Sofie Banke Poulsen. MSc 2025: Forest governance on indigenous titled territories. Now Programme Officer at Forests of the World.
Caroline Rude. MSc 2024: Temporal changes in species diversity and plant functional traits, Disko Island: a historical resurvey (1956-2023). Now Associate Advisor at WSP
Birk Fogde Ørnskov. MSc 2024: Temporal analysis of vegetation changes in Greenlandic snowbeds: A comparison of historical and present-day data. Now at the Danish Nature Agency.
Kian Spencer. MSc 2024: Distribution of useful plants under climate change in Greenland.
Phillip Wulff Carstensen. MSc 2024: The relation between fungal diversity and carbon stocks across Denmark.
Yutong Song. MSc 2023: Evaluation and prediction of habitat suitability for Danish sand lizards (Lacerta agilis) based on MaxEnt models. Now HSE at BGPOffshore, China
Lukas Seifert. MSc 2022: Quantifying the effect of structural habitat complexity on bird species richness in Danish ecosystems. Now pursuing his PhD at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
Laia Codina López. MSc 2022: Ground-based images, a potential tool in forest ecology. Now Environmental Educator at Funbrain
Jascha Brettschneider. MSc 2021: Changes in assemblages and functional traits of Arctic tundra vascular plants over 74 years: A historical resurvey. Now Data Scientist at University of Pennsylvania, USA
Sara Bundgaard. MSc 2021: Arctic vegetation response to climate change over 74 years – A resurvey study of the Kangerlussuaq region based on the historic records of Tyge W. Böcher. Now High School teacher
Ignacio (Nacho) Reyes. MSc 2021: Historical changes in European Odonates’ thermal niches and their link to climate change. Now pursuing his PhD at University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Yaquan Chang. MSc 2020: Plant functional responses to human and environmental drivers — insights from Danish temperate forest communities. Earned her PhD at ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Jesse Case Jones. MSc 2020: Past human influence on disequilibrium dynamics on Eastern United States trees. Now pursuing his PhD at University of Florida, USA
Cathrine Hemmingsen. MSc 2019: Potential impact on terrestrial plant diversity of pollutant loading from port operations at Tema, Ghana. Now Senior Biodiversity Advisor at Ørsted, Denmark
Samantha Van Deurs. MSc 2019: Changes in phytogeographical knowledge over two centuries: An update of the world’s first maps of global plant distributions and floristic regions. Earned her PhD at ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Visitors
Carlos Gonzalez-Orozco. Visiting Researcher 2024-2025 from AGROSAVIA, Colombia. His research focusses on agrobiodiversity, and identifying hotspots of phylogenetic diversity across Colombia.
Francesco Chini. Postdoc Intern 2020. Since Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Tübingen, Germany. Now Reinforcement Learning Expert at enspired.
Nathan Mazet. MSc Intern 2018: Genetic differentiation patterns among species of terrestrial mammals. Earned his PhD at University of Montpellier, France. Now postdoctoral fellow at CNRS, France.
Morueta-Holme Lab 