While ecosystems have concrete benefits for human society, these benefits are typically overlooked in decision-making.

How can ecosystem services within river catchments be quantified in spatial and temporal explicit way?

Proteases degrade matrix molecules in the atherosclerotic plaque, thereby reducing atherosclerotic plaque stability. Mast cells, that contain proteases such as tryptase and chymase, have been identified at the site of rupture in specimens of human coronary arteries and their number in the plaque was…

Developing methodes to understand the evolution of patches in natural ecosystems

How are links between macro-invertebrate diversity and ecosystem functioning influenced by anthropogenic pressures?

Promotor: S.M. Verduyn Lunel, Co-Promotor: O.W. van Gaans

Promotores: G.R. de Snoo, W.T. de Groot, Co-promotor: C.J.M. Musters

For more information regarding ongoing research projects, please contact Dr. Ilze Bot.

Do sustainability values play a role in motivating people to act for biodiversity in successful projects and in successful leadership action? And how could these values be incorporated in current economic valuation methods?

How can mega sand nourishments, such as the Sand Motor, be designed and managed for optimal ecosystem services provision ?

This thesis describes the role of pollution, specifically neonicotinoid insecticides, as an actor of the ongoing biodiversity decline.

Due to their central physiological roles in living organisms, retaining beta-glycosidases have been the subject of tremendous research efforts to examine their structure/function relation using numerous biophysical and biochemical approaches.

Science, Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML)

Vast, often populated, areas in dryland ecosystems face the dangers of desertification.

The current hepatitis B vaccines need to be stored and transported under refrigerated conditions (2-8 degrees C). This dependence on a cold-chain is highly challenging in areas where hepatitis B virus infections are endemic.

Promotores: Prof.dr. W.J.G.M. Peijnenburg & Dr. M.G. Vijver

What are trait-trait relationships in wetlands? To what extent the so-called leaf economics traits deviate from terrestrial ecosystems? How traits specific to wetland plant relate to plant strategies? What’s the relationship between wetland plant traits to the ecosystem functioning (e.g. productivity,…

1: What is the relative importance of alfa and beta biodiversity in polar ecosystems, and how does intraspecific variation influence this? 2: How can we use remote sensing to determine functional biodiversity (within communities) in polar ecosystems? 3: Temporal and spatial scales of functional biodiversity:…

CML report 192

Governance and Global Affairs, Social and Behavioural Sciences

Do Ethiopian wolves change their diet and foraging strategy in the landscape under different land uses? How land use affect Afro-alpine rodent Communities? How important are Afro-alpine natural resources utilisation for local livelihoods? What is the human perception of conflict in the Afro-alpine a…

Fluctuations in individual plant communities contribute to the stability of an ecosystem as a whole, a study published in Ecology Letters shows. Nadia Soudzilovskaia and colleagues for the first time used data from plant communities across five continents to prove this hypothesis.

The modification of risk factors and related health behaviors lies at the very core of adequate cardiovascular risk management, yet evidence shows that the majority of people with cardiovascular disease (CVD) fail to achieve a healthy lifestyle in the long term. The main objective of this project is…

The master’s specialisation Biodiversity and Sustainability at Leiden University provides students with a much better understanding of the biological processes which are essential for creating a sustainable society.

The project Deconstructing Stability aims to improve reconstructions of late prehistoric landscapes and predictive models for the purpose of archaeological heritage management.

The effects of anthropogenic noise on interactions between predators and their prey are still little understood.

Higher temperatures are resulting in changes to vegetation and soil in mountain areas throughout the world. An international research team including Leiden ecologist Ellen Cieraad published an article on 25 January in Nature on the disruption to the ecosystem.

1) Assess the trends in supply and production status of these critical minerals and mineral products worldwide and Europe’s dependence including on intermediate products such as permanent magnets, RE based super alloys, batteries, polishing compounds, phosphors, catalysts etc. 2) Trace the entire value…

Promotor: Prof.dr. G.R. de Snoo, Prof.dr. G.A. Persoon

On Wednesday 5 June, Kalin Anev Janse, Secretary-General and Management Board Member of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), was invited to give a lecture on 'Bridging decision-making: a new direction for Europe? Prioritising financial stability: the European Stability Mechanism and the Banking U…

Thursday February 2nd, 2017 Prof. dr. Janne Bengtsson from Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala has given a lecture called:

To what extent does human intervention influence the world’s biodiversity? And can we predict how biodiversity and ecosystems will change in the coming years? Inaugural lecture by Peter van Bodegom, Professor of Conservation Biology, on 8 May.

As of 1 May 2018, Nicole de Voogd has been appointed as Professor by special appointment Global change and marine ecosystems at the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML). She is currently senior researcher at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the field of tropical marine ecosystems.

Lions limit their prey, such as zebra and gnu, in their options for adapting to global warming. This is what Leiden researcher Michiel Veldhuis, from the Institute of Environmental Sciences, and a group of international colleagues have discovered. The research was published today in Nature Ecology &…

Ethiopian wolves are endangered diurnal Afroalpine rodent hunters. I investigated the interaction between wolves, rodents and human land use in Borena Sayint National Park (BSNP), Abune Yosef and Aboi Gara in Ethiopia.

On Thursday 2 May, the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) of Leiden University hosted a guest lecture given by former NATO Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges, Ambassador Sorin Ducaru.

Ecologist Rosaleen March from the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) will carry on her research on functional biodiversity: a measure to assign value to ecosystems. Following her previous Marie Curie co-fund, she now receives a full Marie Curie fellowship. March: ‘We need to know how losing biodiversity…

CML’s education programme aims at training (under)graduate and graduate students for integrated and multidisciplinary sustainability research and for better decision making in managing the world’s natural resources, environmental quality and biodiversity.

Promotor: A. Doelman, Co-promotor: J.D.M. Rademacher

The European Commission published new plans on artificial intelligence on 19 February. According to Holger Hoos, professor in Machine Learning at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), Bart Verheij (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) and Jeroen van den Hoven (Technische Universiteit Delft)…

Hunter-gatherers caused ecosystems to change 125,000 years ago. These are the findings of an interdisciplinary study by archaeologists from Leiden University in collaboration with other researchers. Neanderthals used fire to keep the landscape open and thus had a big impact on their local environment.…

This research programme aims to increase the scientific understanding of how current and emerging anthropogenic threats affect biodiversity and ecosystem services to facilitate strategic management of natural resources. To this end, we address urgent challenges in relation to the mechanisms involved…

Curiosity is the driving force behind the research of ecologist Michiel Veldhuis. The associate professor investigates ecosystems in relation to climate change in the savannahs of Africa. More and more, he is also looking at social factors such as the influence of population growth. The KNAW rewards…