Bio

Markus Stoffel’s research focuses on Climate Change Impacts and Risks in the Anthropocene (C-CIA), with the aim to understand, document and quantify fundamental environmental processes, and the drivers of change. Much of the research of his group involves the development of applications of tree-ring techniques and the use of various unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). They observe, document and analyze environmental and climatic changes both at the local and the hemispheric scales and by covering daily to seasonal, decadal, centennial and millenial timeframes. In a nutshell, Prof. Stoffel’s research is related to climate change impacts, time-series and dynamics of hydrogeomorphic and earth-surface processes at altitude and/or high latitudes, as well as on dendroecology and wood anatomy of trees and shrubs. More particularly, he has been working over the past few years on the impacts of climatic changes on periglacial mass movements, the effects of volcanic eruptions on climate (temperature, precipitation), peatland evolution over the Holocene and its link to hydroclimatic changes, the effects of climate and global changes on biodiversity, biomass or sequestered carbon in the Himalayas, Myanmar and the Andes, or on causes and effects of erosion in badlands or along the Mediterranean coast. As such, the work of the C-CIA team has contributed to the understanding of the large set of impacts of environmental and/or climatic changes on humans and societies. The research and development projects of the Stoffel lab is mostly dedicated to fields of past, present and future climatic changes, the full set of terrestrial mass wasting and periglacial processes, but also included work on climate change adaptation or the effect of large volcanic eruptions on climate. The use of tree rings as a proxy of climate and terrestrial geomorpho-dynamics has been a key element that explains the success of the dendrolab.ch in the past, and the team continues to work on the full breadth of dendroecological applications and its various applications in the future, as the approach allows a broad and purely multi-disciplinary approach and openness towards many fields of the environmental system. A selection of ongoing projects is listed at http://www.dendrolab.ch/en/proj_ext.php.