Markus Eichhorn

I’m a forest ecologist based at University College Cork in Ireland. My research studies how forest structures form through the interactions among trees, and how the organisation of forests influences other things that live inside them. The main topics I’m working on at the moment are: (1) How can we design forests or management strategies to achieve particular outcomes, such as in production forestry, restoration or habitat creation for conservation. (2) Applications of 3D laser scanning to forest surveying, with a focus on describing the quantity and distribution of foliage. (3) Individual decision-making by plants based on their local spatial context within a population. My interest in the Global Land Programme is in how we can create the right forests, or combination of forests, to solve challenges at the landscape scale. This necessarily involves trade-offs between different forest functions.