WP2: Ecosystem modelling (trophic networks, bentho-pelagic coupling, spatial/temporal)

About the WP Leaders Karline Soetart and Leonardo Saravia

Karline Soetaert  is senior scientist at the location Yerseke of the Netherlands Institute of Sea Research (NIOZ), and an associate professor at Ghent University (Belgium) and at Utrecht University (Netherlands) where she teaches environmental modelling. She is an expert in environmental modelling, benthic ecology and biogeochemistry, and worked amongst other things on estuarine and ocean biogeochemistry, benthic and pelagic foodwebs, environmental modelling, software development and differential equations. In her work she combines experiments and field observations with mechanistic models. Currently, the emphasis of her research is on natural and anthropogenic impacts on the marine environment, with projects in the North Sea, the Dutch Delta, China, Greenland and Antarctica.

Leonardo A. Saravia is a professor/researcher from the Institute of Sciences at the University of General Sarmiento (UNGS), Argentina. He is an expert in mathematical and computational modelling of ecosystems. He has worked developing and analysing freshwater aquatic systems, relating environmental variables and ecosystems responses. He also developed spatial stochastic models applied to forest communities and alien species invasions in terrestrial protected areas. He holds a Licenciatura degree in biology from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA, Argentina), and a PhD also from the University of Buenos Aires. He worked as a consultant to advise in the development of GIS infrastructure and mathematical software for the University of Belgrano (Argentina), and he was a professor at the Maimonides University (Argentina); being his actual position Adjunct Professor at the University of General Sarmiento. He is working now in the structure and stability of Marine Antarctic ecological networks and also in forest fragmentation and habitat loss at a global level. He keeps developing open-source scientific software, including new tools for community spatial analysis, spatial simulations of ecological communities, and Lotka-Volterra stochastic network models. The Institute of Sciences at UNGS, host a variety of different disciplines and an active interdisciplinary complex systems group that is led by Prof. Saravia.