About me
I am a forest ecologist with a strong background in process-based modelling. My work aims to assess how abiotic stress — above all drought and climate extremes — and biotic disturbances such as bark beetles and management interact and affect the growth, mortality and long-term dynamics of temperate forests.
I am based in the Swiss National Forest Inventory group at WSL in Birmensdorf, and I teach Quantitative Vegetation Dynamics at ETH Zurich. Before that I completed my PhD in Forest Ecology at ETH Zurich with Prof. Harald Bugmann, where I developed and tested new versions of the forest gap model ForClim.
How I got here
I trained as a forester and then met dynamic forest models, found them fascinating, and started crunching programming languages. What keeps me there is the tension between two things I care about equally: the mechanistic detail of how a tree declines and dies, and the very practical question a forester asks when standing in a stand — who are you, what were you, where are you going?
Rather than committing to a single modelling school, I am interested in the diverse mechanisms that produce forest responses. Models are powerful allies, but neither a dogma nor the absolute truth. They give us a glimpse of what forest ecosystems might experience under "what if" scenarios, and we owe it to the people who use those answers to interpret them with care.
Current focus. Enhancing the climate sensitivity of MASSIMO, the dynamic forest model behind the Swiss National Forest Inventory, within the BAFU-funded project ReForMASSIMO (2025–2028) — and transferring the drought-mortality framework I built for ForClim into the process-based 3D-CMCC-FEM.
What I work on
Drought-induced mortality
A parsimonious representation of tree death inspired by Manion's decline-disease spiral, separating long-term predisposing stress, acute inciting drought and contributing biotic factors.
Dynamic vegetation models
Development and evaluation of ForClim (v4.1–4.2), MASSIMO, 3D-CMCC-FEM and Forest Studio — across C#, C, Java, Rust and R.
Silviculture & adaptation
Designing management scenarios close to actual forest practice and testing whether they hold up under future climatic conditions.
Tools for practitioners
Turning model output into decision support that foresters can actually use, from species-choice guidance to geospatial planning systems.
Scientific networking
I am a core member of the International Tree Mortality Network, where I bring expertise on dynamic vegetation forest models. I also serve as scientific advisor to the British Ecological Society's Forest Ecology Group, and as communication officer of the Modelling Working Group of SISEF, the Italian Society of Silviculture and Forest Ecology.
Beyond research
I am a mother of a sweet boy and married to a Swiss forester. When there is time left, I craft wooden objects with him at Elvetiholz, paint, argue happily about silviculture, and make music.
