Dr. Joris Cromsigt
Organisation
Assistant Professor, Department for Wildlife, Fish and Environmental Studies, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, SwedenField of expertise
Eurasian and African ungulates in their ecosystemsCountries
About
Understanding the ecology of grazing and browsing systems
His broad interest in ecology tends to focus on the functioning of grazing and browsing systems. Mammalian herbivores are major drivers of terrestrial ecosystems worldwide and changes in their abundance can have strong ecological and socio-economic consequences. With my research program Joris aims to provide governments, industries and NGO’s with the necessary scientific basis to deal with these consequences. He studies the mechanisms that drive herbivore abundance, community assemblages and their role in ecosystem functioning.
Changes in herbivore numbers are often mediated by changes in their food resource. This relation between herbivores and their resources is not passive, but includes a range of positive as well as negative feedback interactions at individual, population and community scale. Joris studies these interactions and the factors that modify them, specifically the role of top-down (herbivores, carnivores) versus bottom-up (abiotic) factors. Hence, his work includes herbivore-plant, herbivore-herbivore and herbivore-carnivore interactions within the abiotic setting of the ecosystem. He is currently exploring the (dis)similarities between herbivore-resource interactions in browsing and grazing systems in Africa and Europe, including Swedish boreal and temperate forests. Moreover, some of his new work will include the effect of predation risk on the impact of herbivores on the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems.
Joris works on two continents; Africa and Europe. He strongly believe that searching for general patterns and mechanisms in ecology will increase our insights in urgent ecological questions. An important way of finding such generalities is the comparison of systems across continents. As such, he compares mammalian herbivores and their role in European boreal and temperate forests and African savannas. He also worked for 1.5 years at the Mammal Research Institute, Poland, studying Europe's last intact lowland forest system, Bialowieza Primeval Forest. Since 1999 he has been involved with the Large Herbivore Foundation and, among other things, developed a first edition of the LHF species database.
Currently, he has several field projects in South Africa, in Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park and Kruger National Park, and since 2006 he coordinates the monitoring of a unique pilot introduction of European Bison in the Netherlands. He runs several projects in the boreal and temperate forests of Sweden.
My activities
My research program also has strong implications for the Eurasian continent and, hence, for LHNet's goals. For example, I believe my research in African savanna systems will provide important insight in the functioning of Eurasian steppe grassland systems, which in many ways might be similar to African savanna grasslands. This is one of the key aspects of my work, comparing African and Eurasian systems where Africa provides Europe with a relatively untouched reference of herbivore dominated systems, while on the other hand solutions that have to be developed for European conservation conflicts provide valuable lessons for the future African situation.