Group Leader: Research Group Sylvanus, Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

"KIT-Associate-Fellow" [eligible to be a Ph.D. Supervisor and Examiner (Prüfungsberechtigung)] at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, Geo and Environmental Sciences, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Emails: somidh.saha@kit.edu; somidhs@gmail.com

Picture
Photo credit: Rake Hora/BNN
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About me

Hi, welcome to my website. My name in the Sanskrit language ("Somidh") means woods of sacred tree species (e.g., Aegle marmelos, Santalum album, Ficus spp.), which are used during Yajñá or religious fire ceremony to the Hindu God of Fire Agni! I was born in the village Bhowraguri in Assam, India, located near the Eastern Himalayas. I spent until the age of 10 at the village Lhamoyzingkha of Bhutan (Kalikhola in Nepali), situated at the lush green Himalayan valley of the river Sankosh. My first schooling was at the Lhamoyzingkha Central School, known as Kalikhola Junior High School, in the 1980s. My childhood in Bhutan, surrounded by forests and the beautiful Sivalik Hills of the Himalayas, positively shaped my life. My family moved to Bhadreswar, Hooghly district of West Bengal, India, in 1991. I studied from class five to twelve in the neighboring city of Chandernagore at the higher secondary school Kanailal Vidyamandir, which the French Colonial Administration established as Saint Mary's Institution/Dupleix College in 1862. I graduated with B.Sc. Honours in Zoology from the prestigious Presidency College, the University of Calcutta, in 2003. An excursion to the Jim Corbett National Park in north India as a B.Sc. student profoundly influenced and motivated me to study Forestry. I completed my M.Sc. in Forestry from the Forest Research Institute, Dehra Dun, India, in 2005. The German Forester Sir Dietrich Brandis established the Forest Research Institute of India ("father of tropical silviculture") in 1878 as the first western forestry training school outside Europe. My interest in German forestry and sustainability research grew when I was a student at the Forest Research Institute of India. I worked as a Forester (employed in a permanent position) in the Eastern Indian state of Orissa from 2005 to 2008 at the Ballarpur Industries Limited, then India's largest pulp and paper company.  I moved to Germany in 2008 with a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD - Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) to do a Ph.D. (Dr. rer. nat.) in Forestry at the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Jürgen Bauhus. I did my Ph.D. and Postdoctoral Research in Freiburg and worked there until 2016. I joined Karlsruhe Institute of Technology on 1st January 2017 as a Scientist. I am married, and my son was born in Karlsruhe in 2019.

About my research

​Globally, forests are declining due to human activities, diseases, and climate change-induced disturbances. My research aims to restore forests and make them more resilient to climate change impacts. I work in urban, commercially managed, semi-natural, and nature protection areas at temperate, subtropical, and tropical forest ecosystems. I believe that solutions for the grand challenges in forestry should be developed by inter and transdisciplinary research. In my research, I connect forest inventory, experimental ecology, silviculture, plant biology, technology assessment to the socioecological, sociocultural, and socio-technical dimensions of forests.