Scientist, Principal Investigator, and Junior Research Group Leader: Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
Karlstr. 11,  76133, Karlsruhe, Germany 

Visiting Scientist and Habilitation Candidate/Habilitand: Chair of Silviculture, Institute of Forest Sciences, Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

Deputy Coordinator, International Union of Forest Research Organization's (IUFRO) Unit "Ecology and Silviculture of Oaks"

Member, IUFRO's Task Force: "Forest Adaptation and Restoration Under Global Change"

Email: somidh.saha@kit.edu; somidhs@gmail.com
Picture
Photo courtesy: Rake Hora/BNN
About my research and teaching:
I am a silviculturist and forest ecologist at the same time! We live in the epoch of Anthropocene where vast tracks of earth’s woodlands are somehow impacted or utilized by Homo sapiens. The human-modified forests should be “managed” concurrently for increasing biodiversity and provisioning ecosystem services in a sustainable manner. At the same time, the resilience of forests to global change must be increased. To achieve these goals, forest management should become more adaptive and flexible. However, contrasting goals in multifunctional forest management can result in trade-offs. I try to find how optimizing forest management systems and human interventions can reduce trade-offs over space and time. I want to understand the ecological, social, and economic processes responsible behind trade-offs. I investigate how alternative ways of forest restoration can be used to increase both silvicultural and ecological values of the forests. I work in temperate as well as in subtropical and tropical forests. My research span into urban forests, commercially managed forests, semi-natural, as well as natural forests. I apply both transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to tackle the challenges in forest management. I do field and laboratory research to answer basic questions such as how species diversity increases forest productivity or reduce mortality, and how vulnerability of trees/forests to climate change impacts change over space and time. I do data crunching (e.g., meta-analyses, data syntheses, and systematic review) to find general trends ! At the same time, I perform social science research (e.g., questionnaire surveys, socioeconomic assessments) to understand stakeholders’ perceptions of social and cultural values of the forests. In addition to doing research, I am involved in teaching and supervising students. I enjoy sharing my experiences with the students and hear their ideas and opinions. Until now, I mentored graduate theses of seven students which are ranged from field/laboratory-based research to desk-based work on the computer. I am open to developing research collaborations and hear interesting ideas and proposals.   

The aims of the research group Sylvanus: 
​Impacts of climate change on natural and built ecosystems are visible all over the globe. Scientists and policymakers are recommending to increase the resilience of ecosystems for minimizing the impacts of climate change. Resilience could be a stochastic process with higher challenges of prediction related to uncertainties.  At the same time, the expectation from human society to get services from ecosystems is growing with a global increase of population. The supply of ecosystem services must come from sustainable management of resources where sustainability can be seen as a normative process.  I postulate that neither resilience nor sustainability can be achieved to an infinite level and trade-offs between resilience and sustainability may widen significantly after a certain threshold. Quantification of such limit and transferring it to practice is one of the most significant challenges we are facing under climate change.  Solutions to the resilience vs. sustainability dilemma would also vary over space (e.g., between countries and ecosystems) and time (e.g., from yearly to centurial scale). In the next five years, group members and I would like to investigate this dilemma in social-ecological systems such as forests. We have selected forests as a model system because our research can focus on natural ecosystems (e.g., multifunctional forests, national parks) as well as for built ecosystems (e.g., trees, parks, woodlands in urban areas or “urban forests”). The research group will combine basic research and applied research in the field of ecology, forestry, sustainability science, bioclimatology, and philosophy under inter- and transdisciplinary framework. The scope of the research group is global, but currently, we can envisage field works and case studies in Germany, India, China, Chile, and the USA.
Recent publications and funding updates:Our research in media:
  • My interview to the Campus Radio of KIT was broadcasted on 5th August 2019 about the resilience of urban trees and forests to drought and heatwaves in Karlsruhe region (click here)
  • Research activities of the GrüneLunge/Green-Lung project was in local online news portal (in German) KA-News on 21st June 2019 (click here)
  • The GrüneLunge/Green-Lung project came as a news in the German daily news paper Badische Neueste Nachrichten (BNN) on 3rd May 2019 (click here)
For prospective interns, B.Sc./M.Sc. students, Ph.D. positions and Postdocs:
  • My research group is open to host interns as well as B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. students for their theses/dissertations from all over the world. The postdoc researchers are also welcomed. The incoming students/researchers should bring their own funding. I will be happy to discuss about the proposal and scope for hosting in KIT.
  • If there is any position available from KIT for the research group then it will be advertised here for online application.
  • Potential funding agencies for international candidates are: the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Humboldt Foundation, EU's Marie Curie fellowship, EU's Erasmus program, Heinrich-Böll scholarship etc.
  • In case of further queries, please contact me at: somidh.saha@kit.edu