Prof. Dr. Thomas Rötzer

Academic Career and Research Areas

Prof Rötzer's research focuses on how trees grow under different environmental conditions in cities and forests, what ecosystem services they provide and how they respond to stress. His interests include investigating the growth dynamics of forests and of the urban green at the individual, stand and landscape levels as well as analysing the effects of climate change on the growth of trees and tree stands and on their ecosystem services. Process-oriented modelling of ecosystems provides a sound basis for these studies. The focus is always on the search for strategies to adapt forests and urban green spaces to climate change.

Thomas Rötzer studied agricultural and horticultural sciences at the Technical University of Munich. After his graduation as Dipl. Ing. in horticultural sciences, he received his doctorate in 1996 and habilitated in 2012 at the Chair of Forest Growth and Yield Science. He has worked at the Ludwig Maximilian University, the Technical University of Munich, the Humboldt University of Berlin and the German Weather Service. He has been an apl. professor of ecological modelling at the Technical University of Munich since 2019 and deputy director of the Centre for Urban Ecology and Climate Adaptation since 2017.