Category Archives: Lab members

Gal Rozenberg

Gal is PhD student investigating invasive plant species. His study focuses on three complementary aspects of invasive plants distribution, adaptation, and ecological management in agricultural ecosystems. Gal has a B.Sc in environmental science and geography from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a M.Sc. in environmental and earth science from Bar-Ilan University.

Shajar Regev

Shajar is a PhD student studying climate change impact on Lake Kinneret ecosystem.The research focuses on employing an ensemble of few lake-models to predict effects of temperature rise and continues droughts on the Kinneret ecosystem (water temperature, nutrients, phytoplankton, zooplankton, and fish). The research is in collaboration with the Kinneret Limnological Laboratory.Shajar has a B.Sc.Eng. (Mechanical Engineering, Technion), B.sc. in Environmental Sciences, and M.sc. in Water Science, both from TelHai College.

 

 

Yohay Carmel photo

Yohay Carmel

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I feel privileged to be able to study subjects that are most important for our future, as well as most complex and interesting. Ecosystems are changing rapidly at many scales, posing major challenges of monitoring, understanding, and mitigation strategies; all of which provide exciting research opportunities. Three major aspects characterize my academic activity:RESEARCH

Y-Research Y-teaching academic activities

RESEARCH

RESEARCH

I. Paradigm-shifts: A most unique moment in a scientist’s work is when one identifies findings that contradict the prevailing paradigm and is able to propose an alternative (incipient) paradigm, within which such data could be reframed. In my career, I had so far two such exciting moments, that culminated in two respective publications, challenging the ‘optimal foraging’ paradigm (Carmel and Ben Haim, American Naturalist 2005) and the ‘competitive exclusion’ principle (Carmel et al. Oikos 2017), respectively.

II. Scientific fields: My lab explores diverse subjects (full list in CV). Click here for current research projects; see below two of my favorite research domains.

Two major research domains

(1) Vegetation Dynamics: I developed a methodology for the study of long-term (30-80 years) changes in vegetation at fine scales (15-20 cm), using computerized classification of B/W and color aerial photos, followed by advanced statistical analyses, in order to quantify the factors affecting vegetation dynamics (here are the respective publications). This methodology was later adopted by numerous researchers, as evidenced by the 300+ citations of these articles (Scopus, 12-2018).

(2) Spatially-explicit mathematical models for management of natural resources. (i) We developed a predictive fire-risk model based on Monte-Carlo simulations of fire behaviour. This model was put to test under unfortunate circumstances, with the tragic 2010 Mount Carmel wildfire occurring just two years after its publication. (ii) Spatial models of biodiversity to aid decision-making. (iii) Spatial models of air-pollution, ecosystems, and others. (iv) Error-propagation models to evaluate the overall accuracy of temporal changes inferred from remote sensing products. These models were cumulatively cited nearly 700 times (Scopus, 12-2018).

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TEACHING

TEACHING

Let us face it: current students do not really need professors anymore, at least not as the sole source of knowledge. They do need us, however, as a source of guidance in a world of information explosion. Academic teaching needs to change accordingly. In each of the three courses that I teach, I adopt a different strategy towards that end:

In ‘Plants and Environment’ (Hebrew syllabus), the subject matter serves as the setting, where the major focus is on supervised practicing of three major skills: (1) searching for relevant literature, (2) separating the wheat from the chaff within the articles, (3) the art of presentations, and (4) scientific writing.

In ‘Ecosystems’ (Hebrew syllabus), the students practice a mini-research project, from inception to reporting; at each stage, they work independently at first, while their interim product is subject to my (gentle) scrutiny.

‘Ecology for Engineers’ (Hebrew syllabus), is perhaps the only course in the ‘Environmental Engineering’ curriculum, where extensive and guided reading of textbook chapters is a major component. The students are motivated to read in English (which is not trivial for most of them) by mini-exams that yield bonuses to their final grade.

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ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES

I. Nurturing next-generation scientists: My alumnii graduate students and postdocs are a source of great pride for me. Three of them have become faculty members in Israeli universities, while five others work in key positions concerning natural resource management in Israel (Israel Ministry of Environment, KKL, INPA, etc).

II. Renewing and leading ISEES: I served as the chair of the Israel Society of Ecology and Environmental Science (ISEES) 2006-2010. During this period, we have transformed ISEES into a vibrant and active society with a new focus, namely the interface between science and decision-making. Towards this end, we have re-established the professional journal in Hebrew, ‘Ecology and Environment‘, initiated the MIMSHAK program of incorporating young scientists in government agencies, Expert Opinion Forums, and other initiatives.

III. Other activities: Among other activities, I chaired the first Scientific Committee of KKL (Israel Forest Authority) (2015-2017), served in the editorial boards of Conservation Biology and PLOSONE, and in various science evaluation panels including those of the ISF, and BSF. A currently most exciting endeavor is The BatSheva De Rothschield Seminar on Socio-Technological Evolution of the Human Species, which I lead, see details here[i].

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JunJing picture

Junjing Gao

Junjing is a Ph.D student in the Ecological and Environment GIS lab. She has a B.Sc. in Faculty of Geography and Tourism from Qufu Normal University,China and a M.Sc. in the Ecological Institute, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences. Her Ph.D. research deals with modelling grazing impacts of nomadic pastoralists on species distribution, community structure and landscape pattern. Her work involves investigating grazing habits and quantifying and modelling their effects with mathematic methods and GIS.

Hila Segre

Hila Segre

Biography

Hila has a BSc in Life Sciences from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she also completed her MSc in ecology studying the effects of grazing on plant communities. She did her PhD in our lab with Prof. Assaf Shwartz and Prof. Yohay Carmel on optimization of ecological benefits and economic costs of field margins for conservation planning. She then continued as a postdoctoral research associate in the Hebrew University and Volcani center, and then in Wageningen University (Netherlands) where she worked on improving wildlife-friendly interventions in farmland to enhance their public (biodiversity) and private (pollination and pest control) benefits. In 2022 she started the Agroecology & Nature Conservation lab in the department of natural resources, Volcani center (ARO), Israel.

Research

PhD dissertation: Optimizing ecological benefits and economic costs of field margins for conservation planning

Advisors: Assistant Professor Assaf Shwartz and Prof. Yohay Carmel

​Development in the past few decades has caused a major decline in biodiversity worldwide, and more species are expected to become extinct in the near future. Conservation efforts so far focused on increasing nature-reserves and improving their quality but sufficient increase is challenging and may not result in the desired increase in biodiversity because of geographic and economic biases in reserve location and size. Instead, multifunctional landscapes with environment-friendly agriculture may support both food-production and conservation goals, but may cause loses in yield and, in turn, economic costs.

In our research, we examine the trade-offs that emerge from the multifunctional-landscapes approach focusing on field margins management.

Our case-study area is located in Emek-Harod valley in Israel, an agricultural area with small semi-natural patches that separates two important ecoregions in Israel (Galillee and the Shomron). The research combines an ecological survey designed to evaluate the ecological value of different land-uses in the valley with field-level manipulation designed to evaluate the costs of leaving uncultivated field-margins.

The results of these two evaluations were combined into a spatially-implicit model to select the planning alternatives that maximize the ecological benefits and minimize the costs for the farmers. Our results provide new insights about better planning of agricultural landscapes, which are crucial for promoting good policy-practices in this field.

Current work

As a postdoctoral research associate at Wageningen University, I continued to work on linking ecosystem services supporting crop yield with farmland conservation, as part of the H2020 SHOWCASE project. In south Limburg, the Netherlands, I compared multiple biodiversity-friendly interventions of different nature and assessed their quality. Specifically, I studied how different guilds of natural enemies and pollinators respond to the management practice and how can we re-design interventions with farmers to improve their quality.

Currently, I am head of the Agroecology & Nature Conservation lab in Volcani center. My main interest is the interface between biodiversity conservation and agricultural landscapes, and I am particularly interested in resolving trade-offs and finding synergies between the benefits to people and to biodiversity. The research in our lab has a strong ecological foundation, which we integrate with methods and concepts from environmental sciences and economy, to explore agro-ecosystems as complex multi-functional systems.

Links

Segre Agroecology & Nature Conservation Lab

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Tomer Gueta picture

Tomer Gueta

Tomer is currently a post-doc following up on his Ph.D. work in the field of biodiversity informatics in Carmel’s Ecology Lab. His research focuses on developing tools and methodology for data-intensive biodiversity research. He has a B.Sc. in Life Sciences from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and an M.Sc. in Ecology from The department of Desert Ecology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.