Prof. Dr. Tobias Plieninger

Prof. Dr. Tobias Plieninger is Professor of Social-Ecological Interactions in Agricultural Systems at the Universities of Kassel and Goettingen. He is also Vice Dean of Research at the Faculty of Organic Agricultural Sciences at the University of Kassel.

He was Associate Professor at the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management at the University of Copenhagen from 2013 to 2017. Before he was leader of a Junior Research Group on “Ecosystem Services in Cultural Landscapes“ at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He studied forestry at the Universities of Freiburg and Goettingen and received a PhD in Landscape Management from the University of Freiburg and a Habilitation degree in Landscape Ecology from Humboldt-University of Berlin.

Tobias Plieninger is a sustainability scientist with a commitment to inter- and transdisciplinary research at the social-ecological interface. In particular, he studies rural landscape change, ecosystem services, and sustainability transformations. His research focuses on the complex relationships between agriculture, forestry, nature conservation, and other sectors of natural resource management.

He was coordinator of the EU-FP7 research project „Sustainable Futures for Europe's Heritage in Cultural Landscapes (HERCULES)“ and has been work-package-leader in the EU projects „Agroforestry that will Advance Rural Development (AGFORWARD)“ and „Spurring Innovations in Forest Ecosystem Services in Europe (SINCERE)“.

Board memberships and reviews (selection):

• Lead Author, Transformative Change Assessment, Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES; since 2022)
• Scientific Board Member, Joint Programming Initiative on Cultural Heritage and Global Change (JPI-CH; since 2020)
• Associate Editor, Landscape and Urban Planning (since 2019), People & Nature  (since 2018)
• Editorial Board Member, Sustainability Science (since 2018)
• Work group on “Biodiversity in Agricultural Landscapes”, German National Academy of Sciences – Leopoldina (2018-2020)
• Review editor, Europe and Central Asia Assessment, Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (2016-2018)
• Ad-hoc referee for DFG, BMBF, EU-Research Framework Programmes, Swiss National Fund (SNF), Research Council for Norway and others

Further details and publications: Google Scholar, Researchgate oder Orcid.