Prof. Michiel van Breugel is a researcher and Co-Investigator of Resilient Blue-Green Infrastructures at the Future Cities Laboratory, ETH Zurich. His research focuses on the ecology and role of forests and trees in human-modified landscapes. He aims to understand how human land-use and ecological processes interact to shape plant community dynamics and ecosystem services in different landscapes.
Prof. van Breugel received his Ph.D. in 2007 from the C.T. de Wit Graduate School for Production Ecology & Resource Conservation at Wageningen University and Research (WUR), the Netherlands. He also holds an M.Sc. in Forest and Nature Management from WUR, which he completed in 1997.
Prof. van Breugel has held various positions throughout his career. He was a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama and has been affiliated with Yale-NUS College and the National University of Singapore. His main research sites are in the Panama Canal Watershed, Singapore, and Antananariva, Madagascar.
Prof. van Breugel's research interests include population, community, and trait ecology. He employs controlled experiments and long-term monitoring of natural forest dynamics to study plant communities and populations. His research in Panama involves a long-term secondary forest dynamics study and experiments on the role of lianas and N2-fixing tree species. In Singapore, he investigates mangrove species distribution and dynamics, as well as ecosystem services of urban trees and greenery. His work in Madagascar focuses on quantifying ecosystem services of trees and tree-dominated vegetation along the urban-rural gradient.
A full list of Prof. van Breugel's publications can be found externally on the Future Cities Laboratory website.