Since 2016, I have been an assistant teacher in several courses (in English) mainly for Master students, mostly focused on landscape mapping and analysis. I hold labs about connectivity analysis, coloured infrared orthophoto interpretation for vegetation mapping, landscape interpretation in the field and initiate the students to the use of R for spatial analysis and geo-computation.

I also assist the students for their individual projects at the end of the course and I am starting to give some lectures mainly in the field of Landscape Ecology.

I have also held literature seminars (on topics such as landscape mapping & semantics, extinction debt, diversity measures).

My PhD project:

Grasslands in northern Fennoscandia are under increasing pressure because of climate change. Grazing has an extensive effect on vegetation and can help to keep the landscape open. Yet, grazing activities are also getting increasingly disturbed by concurrent human activities at northern latitudes. For my PhD project, I aim at highlighting hotspots under multiple stressors and studying how much grazing activities are affected by other human activities. In fine, my objective is to study how these stressors affect the quality and the extent of the grazing land.

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Mapping cumulative pressures on the grazing lands of northern Fennoscandia

  2022. Marianne Stoessel, Jon Moen, Regina Lindborg. Scientific Reports 12

  Article

  Traditional grazing areas in Europe have declined substantially over the last century. Specifically, in northern Fennoscandia, the grazing land is disturbed by cumulative land-use pressures. Here we analysed the configuration of the grazing land for reindeer and sheep in northern Fennoscandia in relation to the concurrent land-use pressures from tourism, road and railway networks, forestry, industrial and wind energy facilities, together with predator presence and climate change. Our results show that 85% of the region is affected by at least one land-use pressure and 60% is affected by multiple land-use pressures, co-occurring with predator presence and rising temperatures. As such, a majority of the grazing land is exposed to cumulative pressures in northern Fennoscandia. We stress that, if the expansion of cumulative pressures leads to grazing abandonment of disturbed areas and grazing intensification in other areas, it could irreversibly change northern vegetation and the Fennoscandian mountain landscape.

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• Abundance, predation, and habitat associations of lemming winter nests in northern Sweden

  2022. Jan Vigués (et al.). Ecosphere 13 (6)

  Article

  Spatially synchronous fluctuations of animal populations have profound ecological consequences, especially in northern latitudes. Spatially coupled fluctuations are often seen in small rodent populations, albeit with local and regional variations. While both resource limitation and predation influence rodent dynamics, their relative importance for generating spatial variation is less clear, particularly during winter. In this study, we quantify spatial variation in winter abundance of the Norwegian lemming (Lemmus lemmus) across three ecologically connected mountain areas in northern Sweden and evaluate whether the relative strength of bottom-up and top-down regulation influences such variation. Our data included observations of predated and nonpredated winter nests as well as environmental characteristics of nest locations and nest predation. While the direction of annual changes in lemming nest abundance was perfectly synchronized among the three areas, there were differences in nest abundance, potentially caused by contrasting amplitudes of temporal fluctuations in lemming winter populations. Mustelid predation was positively associated with decreasing lemming populations but did not differ in occurrence among the three areas. Lemming nests were predominantly observed in meadows, whereas areas prone to flooding and close to the tree line were underrepresented. Mustelid predation was most common close to the tree line, but not associated with geomorphological characteristics related to snow depth. We suggest that the observed differences in lemming winter abundances were caused by variations in the relative strength of bottom-up and top-down regulation in the three mountain areas. We encourage further studies evaluating how the relative strength of different processes influence local population regulation, and how such processes influence spatial variation in animal population dynamics at different spatial scales.

  Read more about Abundance, predation, and habitat associations of lemming winter nests in northern Sweden

• Spatio-temporal patterns of crop damage caused by geese, swans and cranes-Implications for crop damage prevention

  2020. Teresa Montràs-Janer (et al.). Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 300

  Article

  European populations of geese, swans and cranes have increased considerably since the 1970s raising conflicts between conservation and farming interests. Crop damage caused by geese, swans and cranes across the national scale needs a trans-boundary approach that captures the site-specific characteristics of crop damage at a more refined spatial scale, to deal with the high spatio-temporal variation inherent in the system and to avoid conflict displacement. In the present study we use long-term crop damage data (2000-2015) in Sweden to evaluate seasonal and annual patterns of crop damage. We show that crop damage increased over years but followed a fairly consistent seasonal pattern during the later parts of the study period. We show how these seasonal patterns differ across the country such that trans-boundary regions with similar patterns of crop damage, relating to different nuisance species and damaged crops, can be identified. These findings about spatio-temporal variation of damage can be used to find appropriate scales of management units (e.g. areas with similar conditions), and to adapt damage mitigation strategies to temporal and spatial-specific conditions, e.g. guidance of when and where certain crop may be suitable as sacrificial crops.

  Read more about Spatio-temporal patterns of crop damage caused by geese, swans and cranes-Implications for crop damage prevention

• An innovative use of orthophotos - possibilities to assess plant productivity from colour infrared aerial orthophotos

  2019. Rasmus Erlandsson (et al.). Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation

  Article

  Studies of ecological processes should focus on a relevant spatial scale, as crude spatial resolution will fail to detect small scale variation which is of potentially critical importance. Remote sensing methods based on multispectral satellite images are used to assess primary productivity and aerial photos to map vegetation structure. Both methods are based on the principle that photosynthetically active vegetation has a characteristic spectral signature. Yet they are applied differently due to technical differences. Satellite images are suitable for calculations of vegetation indices, for example Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Colour infrared aerial photography was developed for visual interpretation and never regarded for calculation of indices since the spectrum recorded and post processing differ from satellite images. With digital cameras and improved techniques for generating colour infrared orthophotos, the implications of these differences are uncertain and should be explored. We tested if plant productivity can be assessed using colour infrared aerial orthophotos (0.5 m resolution) by applying the standard NDVI equation. With 112 vegetation samples as ground truth, we evaluated an index that we denote rel‐NDVI_ortho in two areas of the Fennoscandian mountain tundra. We compared the results with conventional SPOT5 satellite‐based NDVI (10 m resolution). rel‐NDVI_ortho was related to plant productivity (Northern area: P = <0.001, R² = 0.73; Southern area: P = <0.001, R² = 0.39), performed similar to SPOT5 satellite NDVI (Northern area: P = <0.001, R² = 0.76; Southern area: P = <0.001, R² = 0.40) and the two methods were highly correlated (cor = 0.95 and cor = 0.84). Despite different plant composition, the results were consistent between areas. Our results suggest that vegetation indices based on colour infrared aerial orthophotos can be a valuable tool in the remote sensing toolbox, offering a high‐spatial resolution proxy for plant productivity with less signal degradation due to atmospheric interference and clouds, compared to satellite images. Further research should aim to investigate if the method is applicable to other ecosystems.

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• The fluctuating world of a tundra predator guild: bottom‐up constraints overrule top‐down species interactions in winter

  2018. Marianne Stoessel (et al.). Ecography

  Article

  Global warming is predicted to change ecosystem functioning and structure in Arctic ecosystems by strengthening top‐down species interactions, i.e. predation pressure on small herbivores and interference between predators. Yet, previous research is biased towards the summer season. Due to greater abiotic constraints, Arctic ecosystem characteristics might be more pronounced in winter. Here we test the hypothesis that top‐down species interactions prevail over bottom‐up effects in Scandinavian mountain tundra (Northern Sweden) where effects of climate warming have been observed and top‐down interactions are expected to strengthen. But we test this ‘a priori’ hypothesis in winter and throughout the 3–4 yr rodent cycle, which imposes additional pulsed resource constraints. We used snowtracking data recorded in 12 winters (2004–2015) to analyse the spatial patterns of a tundra predator guild (arctic fox Vulpes lagopus, red fox Vulpes vulpes, wolverine Gulo gulo) and small prey (ptarmigan, Lagopus spp). The a priori top‐down hypothesis was then tested through structural equation modelling, for each phase of the rodent cycle. There was weak support for this hypothesis, with top‐down effects only discerned on arctic fox (weakly, by wolverine) and ptarmigan (by arctic fox) at intermediate and high rodent availability respectively. Overall, bottom‐up constraints appeared more influential on the winter community structure. Cold specialist predators (arctic fox and wolverine) showed variable landscape associations, while the boreal predator (red fox) appeared strongly dependent on productive habitats and ptarmigan abundance. Thus, we suggest that the unpredictability of food resources determines the winter ecology of the cold specialist predators, while the boreal predator relies on resource‐rich habitats. The constraints imposed by winters and temporary resource lows should therefore counteract productivity‐driven ecosystem change and have a stabilising effect on community structure. Hence, the interplay between summer and winter conditions should determine the rate of Arctic ecosystem change in the context of global warming.

  Read more about The fluctuating world of a tundra predator guild: bottom‐up constraints overrule top‐down species interactions in winter

Show all publications by Marianne Stoessel at Stockholm University