Vanessa Maria Sabrina Vetter

• PhD
• PostDoc Position at University of Koblenz and Landau

Humans play an interconnecting role in social-ecological systems (SES), they are part of these systems and act as agents of their destruction and regulation. This study aims to provide an analytical framework, which combines the concept of SES with the concept of tipping dynamics. As a result, we propose an analytical framework describing relevant...

Understanding the development of white sands ecosystems (WSEs) and their occurrence is critical for determining structural diversity in global biodiversity hotspots. WSE has fascinated ecologists for decades, with soil always opined to play a critical role in the development of complex ecosystem vegetation patterns. However, few to no studies have...

Soils contain significantly more carbon than the atmosphere, hence we should understand how best to stabilize it. Unfortunately, the role of human interventions on soil organic carbon (SOC) persistence in the Anthropocene remains vague, lacking adequate sites that allow unbiased direct comparisons of pristine and human influenced soils. Here we pre...

Higher biodiversity can stabilize the productivity and functioning of grassland communities when subjected to extreme climatic events. The positive biodiversity‐stability relationship emerges via increased resistance and/or recovery to these events. However, invader presence might disrupt this diversity‐stability relationship by altering biotic int...

Invasive plant species are increasingly altering species composition and the functioning of ecosystems from a local to a global scale. The grass species Pennisetum setaceum has recently raised concerns as an invader on different archipelagos worldwide. Among these affected archipelagos are the Canary Islands, which are a hotspot of endemism. Conseq...

• Successful alien plant invasion is influenced by both climate change and plant–plant interactions. We estimate the single and interactive effects of competition and extreme weather events on the performance of the global legume invader Lupinus polyphyllus (Lindl.). • In three experimental studies we assessed (i) the stress tolerance of seedling a...

Invasive plant species are increasingly altering species composition and the functioning of ecosystems from a local to a global scale. The grass species Pennisetum setaceum has recently raised concerns as an invader on different archipelagos worldwide. Among these affected archipelagos are the Canary Islands, which are a hotspot of endemism. Conseq...

Plant ecosystem engineers are widely used to combat land degradation. However, the ability of those plants to modulate limiting abiotic and biotic resources of other species can cause damage to ecosystems in which they become invasive. Here, we use Lupinus nootkatensis as example to estimate and project the hazardous potential of nitrogen fixing he...

Successful germination and seedling emergence in new environments are crucial first steps in the life history of global plant invaders and thus play a key role in processes of range expansion. We examined the germination and seedling emergence success of three global plant invaders – Lupinus polyphyllus, Senecio inaequidens and Verbascum thapsus –...