Kristin Bohn

Contact:

Kristin Bohn
MPI for Biogeochemistry
Postfach 10 01 64
D-07701 Jena
Germany

Email: kbohn at bgc-jena.mpg.de
Tel: +49 3641 576214

Education:

03/2008 - present: PhD Student supervised by Axel Kleidon and Björn Reineking (University Bayreuth)

04/2007 - 12/2007: research assistent in the Biospheric Theory and Modelling Group

08/2006 - 02/2007: Diploma thesis: "Zur Rolle von Artenvielfalt und Variabilität im optimalen Verhalten von Ökosystemen"

08/2003 - 08/2004: year abroad at the UPC in Barcelona, Spain

10/2000 - 02/2007: Diploma study of Bioinformatics, Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena, Germany

About me:

During my studies in Bioinformatics I worked on my diploma thesis in the BTM group and started afterwards a PhD in the group. In this thesis I want to understand how large scale vegetation structure and patterns can be influenced by perturbations and plant competition. Vegetation models make indirect assumptions about the strength of competition without knowing its importance, while it is known that perturbations and plant competition affect vegetation and its dynamics and therefore biogeochemical fluxes. To progress in this field, I developed the model Dynamic Interactions of VEgetation (DIVE), that calculates vegetation dynamics based on the physiological plant species characteristics, while considering competition and perturbations. DIVE, coupled to vegetation models allows to model vegetation dynamics, considering the effects of competition and perturbation but also of climate.

Publication:

K. Bohn, J. G. Dyke, R. Pavlick, B. Reineking, B. Reu, A. Kleidon (2011) The relative importance of seed competition, resource competition and perturbations on community structure. Biogeosciences, 8, 1107-1120. doi:10.5194/bg-8-1107-2011 (BG-Link)

B. Reu, S. Zaehle, R. Proulx, K. Bohn, A. Kleidon, R. Pavlick, S. Schmidtlein (2011) The role of plant functional trade-offs for biodiversity changes and biome shifts under scenarios of global climatic change. Biogeosciences., 8, 1255-1266. BG-Link

B. Reu, R. Proulx, K. Bohn, J. Dyke, A. Kleidon, R. Pavlick, S. Schmidtlein (2010) The role of climate and plant functional trade-offs in shaping global biome and biodiversity patterns. Global Ecology and Biogeography, in press.