People

I work as a Professor of Forest Disturbance Ecology. My research interests are broadly in forest disturbance dynamics, aiming to understand how forest structures develop naturally, and how humans have shaped forests over longer time scales. An important part of my research is the application of dendrochronological methods in studying these questions.

I work as a postdoctoral researcher in a Kone Foundation-funded project studying carbon accumulation in boreal forests and its links to disturbance history. My research focuses on synergies between biodiversity and carbon storage. I also collaboratively study the biogeography of Ixodidae ticks and am affiliated with the Conservation Biology Informatics research group at the Finnish Museum of Natural History. I hold a title of docent in Landscape Ecology.

I work as a researcher in the project Borealization of the Finnish Subarctic (BOREARC). I am a treeline ecologist interested in ecological and ecophysiological processes, and plant-environment interactions in a broad sense, at high elevation and high latitude treelines. I use research methods from traditional field ecology to ecophysiological measurements and dendrochronology aiming to understand these processes in space and time.

I work as a doctoral researcher in the Kelo project (www.kelokko.fi). We aim to uncover why long-lasting Deadwood forms, and I am tackling this question through studying the chemical composition of the Scots pine deadwood, combining ecology, spectroscopy and chemistry. I am also part of SNS network studying long‐term Deadwood Trends in Fennoscandia and a board member of Forest Biology group under The Finnish Society of Forest Science.

I am primarily interested in the links between forest dynamics and the community dynamics of forest-dwelling species, including the impacts of anthropogenic habitat modifications. I have mainly worked with epiphytic lichens. In my post-doc project, I am using tree ring data to gain insight on the temporal dynamics of epiphyte communities.

I work as a doctoral researcher in the Kelo project, where I study the growth history Scots pines (Pinus sylvestris) and investigate how and why some of them die standing and turn into persistent deadwood in Finnish boreal forests. By analysing tree rings, I explore the patterns of their formation, how long they remain standing after death, and the factors that influence these processes. 

A number of MSc students are doing their theses within our research group. Below, you can find examples of on-going works, and examples of the types of projects.

Petri Keinonen – I am MSc student in biology. I am interested in treeline and animal ecology. In my master thesis, I aim to find out, which biotic and abiotic factors affect tree biomass in boreal and mountain birch forest in Finnish Lapland. The work is related to project Borealization of the Finnish Subarctic (BOREARC).

Roosa Pajari – Thesis working title: Dead wood dynamics in a boreal old-growth forest.

Helmi Karppinen – Thesis working title: Carbon in dead wood.

Leonardo Coppini – Thesis working title: Spatial Analysis of Deadwood and Carbon Storage in a Boreal Ecosystem.

Eeva-Tuulia Huhtaniemi – Thesis working title: Development of natural forests in eastern Finnish Lapland during the past 50 years.

Elisa Vuorimaa – Thesis working title: Spatial patterns of tree mortality in a boreal forest.

Completed:

Aleksi Knaappila – Forest fires in Finland 2014–2023 – Factors affecting ignition and size of the fires. [In Finnish with English summary]. Link to thesis: http://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:uef-20250335

Emmi Kallioinen (University of Jyväskylä) – Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris) gridling as a restoration method: Impacts on forest structure. [In Finnish with English summary]. Link to thesis: https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:jyu-202506305850

Kalle Salminen – Restoration of deadwood into pine-dominated forests with small gap fellings. [In Finnish with English summary]. Link to thesis: http://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:uef-20240560

Henri Wallen – Visiting Researcher from the University of Lapland, Finland. Henri visited us in March-April 2025, on collaboration in our joint project on the Borealization of the Finnish Subarctic.

Tuomo Wallenius – Senior Researcher. Tuomo is a specialist in dendrochronology. He worked with us in February-March 2025, in the Zetterberg tree ring data project.

Benoit Perier – Intern, studying at AgroParisTech, France. Benoit worked for the summer 2024 with a group of Finnish M.Sc. students on our natural forest dynamics projects, re-measuring a permanent plot in the Petkeljärvi National Park.

Zhongqian Zheng – Visiting Doctoral Researcher, Peking University, China. Zhongqian worked on her PhD thesis on mountain forest dynamics in Shangri-La, China, during an extended visit to our group from November 2022 to February 2024.

Marie Kivits – Intern, studying at AgroParisTech, France. Marie helped us collect 900+ increment cores during the summer 2023, as a part of the Kelo-project.

Romain Bergeret – Intern, studying at AgroParisTech, France. Romain joined us for the summer 2022, helping us with field sampling in different parts of Finland, as part of the Kelo project.

Daniela Oliveira da Silva – Visiting Doctoral Researcher, Universidad de Valo Paraiba, Brazil. Daniela worked with us on her PhD thesis on the dendrochronology of Brazilian tree species. She stayed with us from September 2021 to February 2022.

Flore Cottinet – Intern, studying at UniLaSalle, France. Flore stayed with us from October 2021 to February 2022, helping our field crews collecting samples for fire history reconstructions, as well as in the lab, processing samples for our dead wood dynamics work.

Roman Flury – Visiting Doctoral Researcher, University of Zürich, Switzerland. Roman visited us in October 2021, working on his PhD thesis on scale-dependencies in large geographical datasets.