Stephan Pietsch

Biography

Stephan Alexander Pietsch received academic education in formal logic (BSc), biology (BSc), physiology and ecology of plants (MSc) at the University of Vienna and in biotechnology (PhD) at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU), which provided the basis for his work in the interdisciplinary field of ecosystem modeling. He started this line of research in January 2000 at BOKU's Institute of Forest Growth Research, from where he switched to a faculty position at the Institute of Silviculture in December 2007. While at the beginning all his research activities were concentrated on Europe, he later developed his interest in tropical ecosystems. In this context, he organized and conducted extended field work in tropical Africa to establish the data sets needed for modeling tropical ecosystems under different degrees of disturbance and/or degradation. After being granted the authorization to teach (venia docendi) in Ecosystem Modelling, Dr. Pietsch joined IIASA's Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program in June 2014, to reinforce the modeling of tropical forests and savannahs within IIASA’s G4M and GLOBIOM models developed under ESM's ERD group.

Research Interest

His research interest is focused on ecosystem modeling.