Elisabeth Prangel

My doctoral thesis aims to disentangle the effects of land-use change and changing landscape structure on functioning of ecosystems, biodiversity and on provision of important ecosystem services. Many ecosystem services are related to biodiversity of habitats. Biodiversity, in turn, is highly dependent on habitat spatial configuration and landscape composition. It has often shown that rapid changes in habitat special structure can lead to existence of extinction debt: extinction of species is predicted to occur in the future due to declined habitat area or changed environmental conditions. However, almost nothing is known whether the landscape dynamics also influences the provision of highly valuable ecosystem services. It is possible, that via time-lagged effects on biodiversity, changes in landscape structure can also have time-lagged effects on provision of ecosystem services. That would mean that also some of the ecosystem services that we currently enjoy, can be “doomed” to extinction. Information obtained during my studies aims to provide necessary tools for improved conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services of threatened habitats. My supervisor is Aveliina Helm.

See my CV in Estonian Research Portal