RTG 2300: Enrichment of European beech forests with conifers

Schumann (geb. Steinhoff)

Education

Katja Schumann was born in 1990. Studied „Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolution“ (B.Sc and M.Sc.) at Georg-August-University Göttingen. She received her MA qualification in March 2017. The topic of her Master‘s thesis was: „Variation in branch and leaf traits among three temperate Acer tree species differing in yield and habitat preferences“. Accordingly, her main research interests can be named as: tree physiology, tree hydraulics, wood anatomy, drought stress, climate change and temperate ecosystems. Since 2011 she has been working at the Georg-August-University of Göttingen as a student research assistant, being active in teaching as well as gaining more expertise in laboratory work and field work in the field of tree hydraulics. In summer 2016 she stayed for 3 months in Costa Rica helping in the PhD Project of Roman Link: „Drought in tropical forests: the role of tree height and wood density for hydraulic efficiency, productivity and vulnerability to cavitation of trees along a lowland precipitation gradient“.
Katja was on maternity & parental leave between December 2019 and February 2021. Thus she will remain a PhD student in the RTG until 2022.

PhD Research Project

In October 2017 she became a member of the reaearch training group „RTG 2300“, where she is working on the subproject Drought tolerance mechanisms of Douglas-fir, Norway spruce, and European beech in mixed and pure stands. The focus of this project is to examine the drought tolerance mechanisms of Douglas-fir, Norway spruce and European beech in mixed and pure stands. Mature trees of the named species will be compared with respect to important traits that determine hydraulic architecture, water consumption, drought tolerance and the isohydric/anisohydric water status regulation. The aim is to identify changes within these traits when tree stands are enriched with another species compared to when grown in monocultures. Moreover, cores will be taken to gain information about the climate over the last approximately 20 years.

Publications