Henrike Schulte to Bühne

Henrike Schulte to Bühne's priority research area is mitigating the impacts of climate change on biodiversity.

Biodiversity is under pressure from many different threats, such as climate change, habitat loss, pollution or invasive species. Though we often talk about these threats as neatly separate issues, they often occur simultaneously. When that happens, the effects on biodiversity can be surprising, making it difficult to plan and prioritise conservation interventions.

Through Henrike's work, she is trying to understand what happens when biodiversity is at risk from several different threats at once, focusing specifically on interactions between climate change and other threats.

Henrike investigates large-scale changes in ecosystems, such as differences in vegetation types or disturbance dynamics, that occur when threats interact, to better understand the processes underlying these interactions. In doing this, her work contributes to being able to predict the outcomes of multiple interaction threats better, and to help improve the planning and prioritising of conservation interventions.

She also investigates the effects of specific conservation interventions such as rewilding to help improve our knowledge about how conservation can help biodiversity thrive in the 21st century.

Henrike hopes that over time we will improve our capacity to predict biodiversity changes in response to multiple interaction pressures so that we can take action before harmful changes take place.

Henrike's work focuses on ecosystem-level biodiversity, meaning the composition, structure and functioning of whole ecosystems (as opposed to single species). She uses a lot of satellite imagery in her work to be able to capture ecosystem-level changes at large spatial and, increasingly, large temporal scales.

Professional Qualifications 

• 2017 – Present: PhD Researcher, SSCP DTP, Institute of Zoology and Imperial College London
• 2016 – 2017: Remote Sensing Research Assistant, Institute of Zoology
• 2014 – 2016: MSc in Global Change Ecology, University of Bayreuth (Germany) 
• 2011 – 2014: BA in Natural Sciences (Biological), University of Cambridge

If you are interested in collaborating or learning more about Henrike's work, please drop her an email!