Anna Luisa Hemshorn de Sánchez
Anna Luisa is a PhD candidate at the Earth Science department at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She obtained her BSc in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the TU Hamburg and her MSc in Water Management at the TU Delft. Her PhD research for RESHAPE focuses on regional hydrology and resilience. A more natural configuration of water infiltration, usage, storage, and river flows of the highly altered sandy watersheds of the Netherlands is expected to improve the landscape’s resilience towards droughts, floods, and water quality deterioration. Therefore, Anna Luisa’s research aims to identify nature-inspired guiding principles (NIP) for selected Dutch sandy watersheds and to quantify their hydrological resilience gains. To derive the NIPs, she will study a gradient of landscapes from a global dataset. To quantify the resilience gains of these NIPs against droughts and floods in the selected Dutch watersheds, she will simulate the dynamic interactions between vegetation, soils, rivers, and landscape wetness conditions for various climates. Resulting from this analysis, she will identify the most effective nature-inspired hydrological strategies to improve the resilience of Dutch sand landscapes given a changing climate.
Hanneke Peeters
Hi, my name is Hanneke and I am a PhD candidate at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University. I have a background in organizational studies and gained knowledge on the intersection of public administration and natural science during the master Governance of Sustainability. Before I started my PhD research, I worked at the province of Utrecht on a project aimed at restoring the natural quality of the floodplains of the rivers Nederrijn and Lek. For the Reshape project, I’ll be looking into what governance arrangements facilitate effective landscape transformations. In other words, I will be studying how we can move towards more resilient landscapes in Dutch sandy soils and what societal processes are necessary to achieve this. Implementing nature-inspired water systems requires behavioral changes and support. I am interested in how stakeholders perceive a certain area based on their interests and expertise. I always try to gather information from different angles and am therefore eager to learn from and collaborate with local actors, partners, and my fellow researchers.
Jose David Henao Casas (*Postdoc)
Hi, I’m Jose from Colombia. I’m a geological engineer with an Erasmus Mundus joint master’s degree in Groundwater and Global Change- Impacts and Adaptation. I obtained my PhD in agro-engineering from Universidad Politecnica de Madrid. My research investigated the regional impact of managed aquifer recharge (MAR) in an aquifer in rural Spain. In RESHAPE, I will assess drought development and explore potential drought drivers (e.g., climate or abstractions) in the case study areas. To this end, I will primarily use data and time series analysis of groundwater levels. I will also investigate the effect of adaptation measures on drought and flood risk using predominantly socio-hydrological modeling. I will conduct this research in parallel with my GroundedExtremes project research. Apart from regional hydrogeology and drought, I am interested in the vadose zone and soil science.
Zsóka Halaszova
Hi, my name is Zsóka. I am originally from Slovakia and have been calling the Netherlands my home for five years. I am an avid hiker, outdoors enthusiast, and gardener. In the RESHAPE project, I will be focusing on the economics of transforming the Dommel and Vecht catchments. More specifically, I’ll be studying spatially explicit ecosystem service values and the economics of transitioning to different land uses. My experience lies in conducting social cost-benefit analyses and valuing ecosystem services. I am enthusiastic about studying out-of-the-box ideas that can create synergies between multiple policy targets. In the process, it is important for me to listen and meet the people for whom the project outcome matters the most.
Cécile Alsbach
Hi! My name is Cécile and I work as a PhD for the RESHAPE project. I have a background in earth sciences and I am greatly interested in how landscapes and ecosystems and land use influence each other, and how this influences soil and water dynamics. For RESHAPE I’ll be looking into the water-carbon-nutrient dynamics in Dutch sandy soils. I will focus my research on how we can integrate nature-inspired principles to make these landscapes more resilient in the future. An issue with sandy soils is that they are sensitive to drought. Under drought conditions the regular soil processes (such as nitrogen mineralization, degradation of organic matter, etc.) behave differently, altering the chemistry of the water that flows through the soil and collects in the river. With more frequent and more severe droughts expected due to climate change, it is all the more important to understand how these nutrient cycles are affected by climate change, and what we can do to mitigate the issue.
Tapasya Mukkamala
Tapasya is a PhD candidate at the Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning (LSP) cluster at the Wageningen University and Research (WUR). As a landscape-urban designer, she has 6 years of experience working in design firms in India and the Netherlands on projects ranging from strategic plans to public space designs. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch.) degree from India and an M.Sc. in Landscape Architecture from TU Delft. Her interest has always been in studying and implementing landscape-inspired design strategies and regional plans for resilient water systems, especially river deltas. Within the RESHAPE project, Tapasya will focus on developing land use and landscape-scale spatial design configurations based on Nature-inspired guiding principles (NIPs) and ecosystem services with soil and water as guiding systems. She also aims to collaborate closely with the local stakeholders through co-design workshops and feedback sessions to define clear shared visions and optimize the models for the resilient sand landscapes in the Dommel and Vecht watersheds. Through this research project, she is keen on exploring the role of spatial planning and landscape design in enabling effective decision-making backed by scientific evidence to address climate-related challenges.