Publications

Nielja Knecht, Ingo Fetzer, Juan Rocha. 2024. Global terrestrial ecosystem resilience: a high-resolution multivariate analysis of patterns and drivers. EGU. https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-12856

Global assessments of ecosystem resilience often exclude areas with direct anthropogenic land use changes and focus instead on remnant natural ecosystems. However, for regional stakeholders it is important to understand how land-use and zoning decisions may affect the resilience of remaining ecosystems and the risk of critical transitions. In this study, we conduct a high-resolution global assessment of terrestrial ecosystem r...

Corentin Clerc, Laurent Bopp, Fabio Benedetti, Nielja S. Knecht, Meike Vogt, Olivier Aumont. 2024. Effects of mesozooplankton growth and reproduction on plankton and organic carbon dynamics in a marine biogeochemical model. ESS. https://doi.org/10.22541/essoar.170983160.00886471/v1

Marine mesozooplankton play an important role for marine ecosystem functioning and global biogeochemical cycles. Their size structure, varying spatially and temporally, heavily impacts biogeochemical processes and ecosystem services. Mesozooplankton exhibit size changes throughout their life cycle, affecting metabolic rates and functional traits. Despite this variability, many models oversimplify mesozooplankton as a single, u...

D. Rodríguez-Rodríguez, N. Knecht, J.C. Llopis, R.A. Heriarivo, H. Rakotoarison, V. Andriamampionomanjaka, E. Navarro-Jurado, V. Randriamamonjy. 2024. Socioeconomic impacts of small conserved sites on rural communities in Madagascar. Environmental Development. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2024.100965

Madagascar is considered one of the top global biodiversity hotspots while at the same time is among the world's least developed countries. Pressing socioeconomic needs such as food provision often lead to unsustainable land uses and widespread loss, fragmentation and degradation of natural habitats. Thus, ascertaining the socioeconomic effects of small conserved sites is urgent in order to show their benefits and identify the...

Nielja S. Knecht, Fabio Benedetti, Urs Hofmann, nina Bednaršek, Sonia Chaabane, Catharina de Weerd, Katja Peijnenburg, Ralf Schiebel, Meike Vogt. 2023. The impact of zooplankton calcifiers on the marine carbon cycle. ESS. https://doi.org/10.22541/essoar.167283650.05543210/v1

Shelled pteropods and planktic foraminifers are calcifying zooplankton that contribute to the biological carbon pump, but their importance for regional and global plankton biomass and carbon fluxes is not well understood. Here, we modelled global annual patterns of pteropod and foraminifer total carbon (TC) biomass and total inorganic carbon (TIC) export fluxes over the top 200m using an ensemble of five species distribution m...