Julia Pongratz Do Land Management Changes Have Effects on Climate as Large as Land Cover Changes?

Julia Pongratz is member of the Emmy Noether Independent Junior Research Group “Forest Management in the Earth System”, at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg. In 2009 she was awarded the Otto-Hahn-Medal of the Max Planck Society for her doctoral thesis on the effect of land cover change on the climate. .She participated in Fast Track: Excellence and Leadership Skills for Outstanding Women in Science by the Robert-Bosch-Stiftung. Pongratz works with the Department of Land in the Earth System and studies the effect of land management change on our climate.

Area of Research

Climate Research

Julia Pongratz, Christian H. Reick, Richard Houghton and Joanna House. "Terminology as a Key Uncertainty in Net Land Use and Land Cover Change Carbon Flux Estimates." Earth System Dynamics 5 (2014): 177-195.  
Julia Pongratz, David B. Lobell, Long Cao and Ken Caldeira. "Crop Yields in a Geoengineered Climate." Nature Climate Change 2 (2012): 101-105.  
Richard A. Houghton, Joanna House, Julia Pongratz, Guido R. Van der Werf, Ruth S. DeFries, Matthew C. Hansen, Corinne Le Quéré and Navin Ramankutty. "Carbon Emissions from Land Use and Land-Cover Change." Biogeosciences 9 (2012): 5125-5142.  
Julia Pongratz, Christian H. Reick, Thomas Raddatz, Ken Caldeira and Martin Claussen. "Past Land Use Decisions Have Increased Mitigation Potential of Reforestation." Geophysical Research Letters 38 (2011).  
Julia Pongratz, Christian H. Reick, Thomas Raddatz and Martin Claussen. "Effects of Anthropogenic Land Cover Change on the Carbon Cycle of the Last Millennium." Global Biogeochemical Cycles 23 (2009).  

since 2013

Group Leader of the Emmy Noether Independent Junior Research Group ”Forest Management in the Earth System”

Max Planck Society (more details)

Max Planck Institute for Meteorology

2012-2013

Independent Research as Klaus Hasselmann Post-Doctoral Fellow

Max Planck Society (more details)

Max Planck Institute for Meteorology

2009-2012

Postdoctoral Researcher

Carnegie Institution, Dept. Global Ecology, Stanford, USA

2006-2009

Research Work Towards PhD

Max Planck Society (more details)

Max Planck Institute for Meteorology

2005-2006

Scientific Assistant

German Aerospace Center, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany

2003-2004

Student Employment in the LBA-Project

University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA in collaboration with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

2001-2003

Student Assistant in the GLOWA Project

Ludwig Maximilian University Munich (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)

2009

PhD in Geosciences

Max Planck Society (more details)

Thesis "A Model Estimate on the Effect of Anthropogenic Land Cover Change on the Climate of the Last Millennium"

2005

Diploma in Physical Geography

Ludwig Maximilian University Munich (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)

Thesis "Estimating the Impact of Land Cover Change on Energy and Water Balance in Mato Grosso, Brazil"

Fellowships

- Member of the Junge Akademie (since 2014)

- Fast Track Program of the Robert Bosch Stiftung (2012–2014)

- Scholarship of the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) (2001–2005)

- Grant from the German-American Fulbright Program (2003–2004)

Prizes

- Editor’s Citation for Excellence in Refereeing (2011)

- Wladimir Peter Köppen Award (2010)

- Otto Hahn Medal (2009)

- Young Scientists’ Outstanding Poster Paper (YSOPP) Award (2008)

© Maximilian Dörrbecker

Max Planck Society

Hamburg, Germany

"The Max Planck Society is Germany's most successful research organization. Since its establishment in 1948, no fewer than 18 Nobel laureates have emerged from the ranks of its scientists, putting it on a par with the best and most prestigious research institutions worldwide. The more than 15,000 publications each year in internationally renowned scientific journals are proof of the outstanding research work conducted at Max Planck Institutes – and many of those articles are among the most-cited publications in the relevant field." (Source)

Institute

Max Planck Institute for Meteorology

"The Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) is an internationally renowned institute for climate research. Its mission is to understand Earth's changing climate. Scientists at the MPI-M investigate what determines the sensitivity of the Earth system to perturbations such as the changing composition of its atmosphere, and work toward establishing the sources and limits of predictability within the Earth system. For that purpose MPI-M develops and analyses sophisticated models of the Earth system. Targeted in-situ measurements and satellite observations complement the model simulations." (Source)

Map

The study presented in this video evaluates data from observational towers, satellite pictures and other published data to compare the impact of land-cover change and land management change on climate. The results show that land management change within the same vegetation (e.g., harvesting a formerly untouched forest) has effects on climate change that are similarly large as effects of land-cover change (e.g., changing forests into pasture). Thus, JULIA PONGRATZ explains, earth system models which are used to estimate human impact on climate should include changes in land management.

LT Video Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB10108

Land Management and Land-Cover Change Have Impacts of Similar Magnitude on Surface Temperature

  • Sebastiaan Luyssaert, Mathilde Jammet, Paul C. Stoy, Stephan Estel, Julia Pongratz, Eric Ceschia, Galina Churkina, Axel Don, Karl-Heinz Erb and Morgan Ferlicoq
  • Nature Climate Change
  • Published in 2014
Sebastiaan Luyssaert, Mathilde Jammet, Paul C. Stoy, Stephan Estel, Julia Pongratz, Eric Ceschia, Galina Churkina, Axel Don, Karl-Heinz Erb and Morgan Ferlicoq. "Land Management and Land-Cover Change Have Impacts of Similar Magnitude on Surface Temperature." Nature Climate Change 4 (2014): 389-393.