The chain that supplies patients with new medicines consists of various complex links: from fundamental research to clinical tests and production. This entire chain is represented in Leiden. Leiden University, the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), and the companies on the Leiden Bio Science Park…

Soil biodiversity is of great importance for the maintenance of multifunctionality in terrestrial ecosystems.

Exploring the Meanings of Lands and Forests as an Avenue for Mutual Development of People and Nature in Ghana

How can ecosystem services within river catchments be quantified in spatial and temporal explicit way?

Both the Dutch government and the European Commission dedicate an increasing share of public funding for research and innovation to mission-oriented programs, aiming to facilitate sustainability transitions. These programs typically involve support fora range of different research activities, from the…

A comprehensive analysis of the state of play, the design of monitoring mechanisms, and creation of a toolbox of support measures.

Developing methodes to understand the evolution of patches in natural ecosystems

While ecosystems have concrete benefits for human society, these benefits are typically overlooked in decision-making.

The BENEFIT programme is a public-private ecosystem in a national consortium, aiming to support patients with cardiovascular diseases in their own home setting for a long-term healthy lifestyle.

Promotores: Prof.dr. W.J.G.M. Peijnenburg & Dr. M.G. Vijver

The application of nanomaterials in industrial processes and consumer products provides many societal benefits, but can also lead to the release of nanomaterials into the environment. The work in this dissertation aims to provide insights into the potential environmental impacts that may follow from…

The modification of risk factors and related health behaviors lies at the very core of adequate cardiovascular risk management, yet evidence shows that the majority of people with cardiovascular disease (CVD) fail to achieve a healthy lifestyle in the long term. The main objective of this project is…

To contribute to the body of knowledge aiming at a better coverage of ecosystem service assessment in LCA studies, this thesis dives into the challenges of incorporating existing ecosystem service methods within the impact assessment phase of the conventional LCA framework.

Promotores: G.R. de Snoo, W.T. de Groot, Co-promotor: C.J.M. Musters

Do sustainability values play a role in motivating people to act for biodiversity in successful projects and in successful leadership action? And how could these values be incorporated in current economic valuation methods?

How can mega sand nourishments, such as the Sand Motor, be designed and managed for optimal ecosystem services provision ?

How are links between macro-invertebrate diversity and ecosystem functioning influenced by anthropogenic pressures?

This thesis describes the role of pollution, specifically neonicotinoid insecticides, as an actor of the ongoing biodiversity decline.

Vast, often populated, areas in dryland ecosystems face the dangers of desertification.

1: What is the relative importance of alfa and beta biodiversity in polar ecosystems, and how does intraspecific variation influence this? 2: How can we use remote sensing to determine functional biodiversity (within communities) in polar ecosystems? 3: Temporal and spatial scales of functional biodiversity:…

CML report 192

1) Assess the trends in supply and production status of these critical minerals and mineral products worldwide and Europe’s dependence including on intermediate products such as permanent magnets, RE based super alloys, batteries, polishing compounds, phosphors, catalysts etc. 2) Trace the entire value…

Do Ethiopian wolves change their diet and foraging strategy in the landscape under different land uses? How land use affect Afro-alpine rodent Communities? How important are Afro-alpine natural resources utilisation for local livelihoods? What is the human perception of conflict in the Afro-alpine a…

This project investigates the full ecosystem of Middle Dutch prayerbooks in order to answer questions about their role in – and impact on – religion, culture, and society in the late medieval Low Countries.

The effects of anthropogenic noise on interactions between predators and their prey are still little understood.

What are trait-trait relationships in wetlands? To what extent the so-called leaf economics traits deviate from terrestrial ecosystems? How traits specific to wetland plant relate to plant strategies? What’s the relationship between wetland plant traits to the ecosystem functioning (e.g. productivity,…

Higher temperatures are resulting in changes to vegetation and soil in mountain areas throughout the world. An international research team including Leiden ecologist Ellen Cieraad published an article on 25 January in Nature on the disruption to the ecosystem.

Promotor: Prof.dr. G.R. de Snoo, Prof.dr. G.A. Persoon

Ethiopian wolves are endangered diurnal Afroalpine rodent hunters. I investigated the interaction between wolves, rodents and human land use in Borena Sayint National Park (BSNP), Abune Yosef and Aboi Gara in Ethiopia.

Fluctuations in individual plant communities contribute to the stability of an ecosystem as a whole, a study published in Ecology Letters shows. Nadia Soudzilovskaia and colleagues for the first time used data from plant communities across five continents to prove this hypothesis.

To what extent does human intervention influence the world’s biodiversity? And can we predict how biodiversity and ecosystems will change in the coming years? Inaugural lecture by Peter van Bodegom, Professor of Conservation Biology, on 8 May.

Hunter-gatherers caused ecosystems to change 125,000 years ago. These are the findings of an interdisciplinary study by archaeologists from Leiden University in collaboration with other researchers. Neanderthals used fire to keep the landscape open and thus had a big impact on their local environment.…

The European Commission published new plans on artificial intelligence on 19 February. According to Holger Hoos, professor in Machine Learning at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS), Bart Verheij (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) and Jeroen van den Hoven (Technische Universiteit Delft)…

More severe droughts that will also last longer: this will primarily be a problem for irrigated croplands, as discovered by environmental scientist Qi Chen. Mixed forests with a variety of plant species will be the least vulnerable. Chen compared the effects of drought on different ecosystems across…

Thursday February 2nd, 2017 Prof. dr. Janne Bengtsson from Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala has given a lecture called:

In this study, Tessa Dool and Thijs Bosker estimate the microplastic uptake of two odontocetes in the Mediterranean Sea and the Norteast Atlantic.

Ecologist Rosaleen March from the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) will carry on her research on functional biodiversity: a measure to assign value to ecosystems. Following her previous Marie Curie co-fund, she now receives a full Marie Curie fellowship. March: ‘We need to know how losing biodiversity…

As of 1 May 2018, Nicole de Voogd has been appointed as Professor by special appointment Global change and marine ecosystems at the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML). She is currently senior researcher at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the field of tropical marine ecosystems.

Environmental researcher Martina Vijver is over the moon with her ERC Consolidator Grant. This prestigious grant is recognition, she says, of the study of the behaviour and possible toxicity of new nanomaterials in ecosystems.

The underwater world around present-day Indonesia has changed greatly in recent centuries as a result of human activity. University lecturer Johannes Müller has been awarded an NWO XS grant to map the history of the Indonesian ecosystems.

Mycorrhizas are symbiotic associations between soil fungi and most plant species.

Dr. Katharine MacDonald (Faculty of Archaeology) sketches the background to a recent paper in Science Advances, co-authored by her and other members of the Liveable Planet team.

The changes that humans are making to the landscape are beneficial for mosquitoes that spread diseases such as Zika, chikungunya and dengue. This is what biologist Maarten Schrama and his colleagues write in the journal Nature Scientific Reports. ‘If we know in which living environments mosquitoes thrive…

This research programme aims to increase the scientific understanding of how current and emerging anthropogenic threats affect biodiversity and ecosystem services to facilitate strategic management of natural resources. To this end, we address urgent challenges in relation to the mechanisms involved…

What is the optimal design of sandy solutions for sustainable climate change adaption, from an ecological, biophysical and societal point of view?