Prof. Dr. Tobias Plieninger
Prof. Dr. Tobias Plieninger is Head of the Chair 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.
Contact: plieninger[at]uni-kassel.de
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 in Landscape Ecology from Humboldt-University of Berlin.
Research Foci
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-research association „Sustainable Futures for Europe's Heritage in Cultural Landscapes (HERCULES)“ and work-package-leader in the EU-research associations „Agroforestry that will Advance Rural Development (AGFORWARD)“ and „Spurring Innovations in Forest Ecosystem Services in Europe (SINCERE)“.
Academic distinctions
Since 2023 Member of Academia Europaea
Since 2022 Henriette Herz Scout, Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation
Since 2019 Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher
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
Publications (selection)
- Plieninger, T., Abunnasr, Y., D’Ambrosio, U., Guo, T., Kizos, T., Kmoch, L., Topp, E. & Varela, E. (2023). Biocultural conservation systems in the Mediterranean region: the role of values, rules, and knowledge. Sustainability Science 18: 823-838.
- Plieninger, T., Shamohamadi, S., García-Martín, M., Quintas-Soriano, C., Shakeri, Z. & Valipour, A. (2023). Community, pastoralism, landscape: Eliciting values and human-nature connectedness of forest-related people. Landscape and Urban Planning 233: 104706.
- Torralba, M., Nishi, M., Cebrián-Piqueras, M.A., Quintas-Soriano, C., García-Martín, M., & Plieninger, T. (2023). Disentangling the practice of landscape approaches: A Q-method analysis on experiences in socio-ecological production landscapes and seascapes. Sustainability Science 18, 18931906.
- García-Martín, M., Huntsinger, L., Ibarrola-Rivas, M.J., Penker, M., D’Ambrosio, U., Dimopoulos, T., Fernández-Giménez, M.E., Kizos, T., Muñoz-Rojas, J., Saito, O., Zimmerer, K.S., Abson, D.J., Liu, J., Quintas-Soriano, C., Sørensen, I.H., Verburg, P.H. & Plieninger, T. (2022). Landscape products for sustainable agricultural landscapes. Nature Food 3: 814-821.
- García-Martín, M., Torralba, M., Quintas-Soriano, C., Kahl, J. & Plieninger, T. (2021): Linking food systems and landscape sustainability in the Mediterranean region.Landscape Ecology 36, 2259-2275.
- Fagerholm, N., Martín-López, B., Torralba, M., Oteros-Rozas, E., Lechner, A., Bieling, C., Stahl Olafsson, A., Albert, C., Raymond, C., García Martín, M., Gulsrud, N. & Plieninger, T. (2020): Perceived contributions of multifunctional landscapes to human wellbeing: Evidence from 13 European sites.People and Nature 2: 217-234.
- Flinzberger, L., Zinngrebe, Y. & Plieninger, T. (2020): Labelling in Mediterranean agroforestry landscapes: a Delphi study on relevant sustainability indicators. Sustainability Science 15: 1369-1382.
- Perino, A., Pereira, H.M., Navarro, L.M., Fernández, N., Bullock, J.M., Ceausu, S., Cortés-Avizanda, A., van Klink, R., Kuemmerle, T., Lomba, A., Pe’er, G., Plieninger, T., Rey Benayas, J.M., Sandom, C., Svenning, J.C., Wheeler, H.(2019). Rewilding complex ecosystems. Science 364, eaav5570.
- Plieninger, T., Kohsaka, R., Bieling, C., Hashimoto, S., Kamiyama, C., Kizos, T., Penker, M., Kieninger, P., Shaw, B.J., Sioen, G.B., Yoshida, Y., Saito O. (2018). Fostering biocultural diversity in landscapes through place-based food networks: A “solution scan” of European and Japanese models. Sustainability Science 13, 219-233.
- Torralba, M., Fagerholm, N., Hartel, T., Moreno, G., Plieninger, T. (2018). A social-ecological analysis of ecosystem services supply and trade-offs in European wood-pastures. Science Advances 4, art. eaar2176.
- Bieling, C., Plieninger, T. (eds.) (2017). The Science and Practice of Landscape Stewardship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Plieninger, T., H. Draux, N. Fagerholm, C. Bieling, M. Bürgi, T. Kizos, T. Kuemmerle, J. Primdahl, P.H. Verburg (2016). The driving forces of landscape change in Europe: A systematic review of the evidence. Land Use Policy 57, 204-214.