- Biosphere integrity
- Vegetation modelling
- Planetary Boundaries
- Forest systems
- Water stress
- Negative emissions
- Mitigation
Fabian Stenzel works with the ReForMit project, aiming to understand and secure the resilience of forest-based climate change mitigation.
Fabian Stenzel is a visiting researcher from Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. As a vegetation modeller, his work focuses on improving the physical science basis of the Planetary Boundary framework with a focus on water and biosphere integrity. In the new ReForMit project - a collaboration between Stockholm Resilience Centre, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Stockholm International Water Institute, and KTH Royal Institute of Technology - Stenzel will co-create different forest mitigation scenarios, and assess their interactions with biosphere integrity.
Stenzel earned his PhD from Humboldt University of Berlin, where his research centered on the "Irrigation water demand of large scale biomass plantations". During his doctoral studies, he was an active member of the IRI THESys graduate programme. He holds a Master's degree in Geophysics from LMU and TU Munich, which he completed in 2015.
Awards and achievements
- IIASA - Young Scientists Summer Program (2019)
- Gründergarasjen Summer Project in Computational Geosciences at Simula Research Laboratories, Oslo (2013)
- LMU PROSA scholarship for geophysical study and research, EarthByte-group, USYD Sydney (2012)
- DAAD-RISE (German Academic Exchange Service) scholarship for geophysical research (2011)
Key publications
Braun, J.; Werner, C.; Gerten, D.; Stenzel, F.; Schaphoff, S. & Lucht, W.: Multiple planetary boundaries preclude biomass crops for carbon capture and storage outside of agricultural areas, Communications Earth & Environment, 2025, 6, 1-14, https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02033-6
Stenzel, F., Braun, J., Breier, J., Erb, K., Gerten, D., Heinke, J., Matej, S., Ostberg, S., Schaphoff, S., and Lucht, W.: biospheremetrics v1.0.2: An R package to calculate two complementary terrestrial biosphere integrity indicators: human colonization of the biosphere (BioCol) and risk of ecosystem destabilization (EcoRisk), Geoscientific Model Development, 2024, 17, 3235-3258, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-17-3235-2024
Keys, P. W.; Wang-Erlandsson, L.; Moore, M.-L.; Pranindita, A.; Stenzel, F.; Varis, O.; Warrier, R.; Wong, R. B.; D’Odorico, P. & Folke, C. The dry sky: future scenarios for humanity’s modification of the atmospheric water cycle
Global Sustainability, 2024, 7, e11, https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2024.9
Nyasulu, M. K.; Fetzer, I.; Wang-Erlandsson, L.; Stenzel, F.; Gerten, D.; Rockström, J. & Falkenmark, M.: African rainforest moisture contribution to continental agricultural water consumption, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 2024, 346, 109867, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2023.109867
Stenzel, F., Greve, P., Lucht, W., Tramberend, S., Wada, Y., Gerten, D.: Irrigation of biomass plantations may globally increase water stress more than climate change. Nat Commun 12, 1512 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21640-3
