Doctor Uffe Nielsen

Uffe joined UWS in 2011 from the Department of Biology and Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University, USA, where he worked as a Research Scientist with Professor Diana H. Wall. Uffe received his PhD in 2008 from University of Aberdeen, Scotland, in close collaboration with the Macaulay Institute (now the James Hutton Institute) and Center of Hydrology and Biology (CEH). His PhD research focused on the distribution and community composition of soil biota (microbes and soil mites in particular) across various spatial scales in two contrasting habitats. This research mainly targeted the questions of what structures belowground communities and how belowground communities respond to environment parameters and environmental changes (such as land use and climate). Through his research at CSU Uffe continued investigating patterns of, and mechanisms underlying, biodiversity and community composition belowground, whilst also trying to establish and quantify potential links between soil biodiversity and belowground community composition and ecosystem processes/functioning and ecosystem services. His position here also allowed him to expanded his research to include a more broad range of soil biota and explore the flow of C and N through the soil food web using stable isotope techniques.

Uffe is broadly interested in community and ecosystem ecology, and the link between the two, i.e. how do changes in one influence the other. In a time where large-scale changes in land use and climate are impacting ecosystems across the globe it is essential for human well-being to acquire knowledge of the potential implications of these changes. For instance, species gains and losses, and changes in community composition, belowground due to climate changes can impact nutrient cycling, which may lead to changes in aboveground communities and potentially limit productivity of agricultural lands. Other research areas of interest to Uffe include large-scale ecological theories, whether ecological theories hold across ecosystem types (including soils) and scales, drivers of species richness and biogeography (of soil biota in particular) etc. Over the past few years Uffe has used the biologically simple soils of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, East Antarctica, to explore these aspects of ecology. While he will continue his Antarctic research through collaboration with the Australian Antarctic Division as well as the USA McMurdo Long Term Ecological Research program he will explore whether the hypotheses formed through this research are applicable in more biologically complex systems.

This information has been contributed by Doctor Nielsen.