Address:

Department of Global Environmental Assessment
Bureau of Nature Assessments
National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM)
P.O. Box 1, 3720 BA Bilthoven, The Netherlands
Phone: +31 30 2743377
Fax: +31 30 274 4435
Email: rik.leemans@wur.nl

Research interests:

Dr. Rik Leemans is a senior scientist and currently leader of the multidisciplinary IMAGE-Project of the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), The Netherlands and Professor in "Integrated Land-Use Modelling" at Wageningen University. His research aims to determine the responses and vulnerability of eco- and agrosystems to environmental change (including climate change), to develop appropriate models and other tools to accomplish this and to evaluate strategies to mitigate negative effects of these changes. The results of his research are used to support the development and evaluation of (inter)national climate-change policies. He also is a major contibutor to the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

His early studies at Uppsala University (Sweden) emphasised the successional dynamics and structure of boreal forests. He then moved to a research position at the Biosphere Project of the International Institute of Applied System Analyses (IIASA, Austria). Here he developed a simulation model for the circumpolar boreal forest biome and used it to assess the impacts of climate change on these ecosystems. Since then his research has excelled into modelling global land cover patterns and incorporating land-use aspects in changes therein. His main research interests concern biodiversity, vegetation structure and dynamics, land-use and cover change, C–cycle, bio-energy and global environmental data bases. These interests have lead to the development of integrated modelling approaches for the biosphere of the IMAGE 2 model. This innovative model explicitly incorporates the anthropogenic influences on changing land cover patterns on greenhouse gas emission from the terrestrial biosphere.

Dr. Leemans has published on a wide range of topics. These include forest dynamics, large-scale vegetation and crop distribution, global environmental databases, terrestrial C cycle and the importance of feedback processes, the incorporation of land-use change into Earth system models, biodiversity, integrated assessment tools and, more recently, potential mitigation options and strategies for climate change.