Earth System Science

The Earth System Science (ESS) group is part of the Department of Geography at the University of Zurich. ESS’s central goal is to advance understanding of the coupled dynamics between environmental and social processes and their interface with biodiversity and ecosystem services. Bridging novel observation capacities provided by Earth Observation technology (i.e., imaging spectroscopy), field observations with statistical and process models is our strength. Our main research goals are to understand responses to deemed ‘sustainability challenges’, i.e. problems of difficult resolution because of strong trade-offs that hinder the resilience of the Earth system. As such we focus on social-ecological couplings at the center of sustainability challenges, e.g. how to conserve biodiversity and maintain livelihoods, how to provide food and water security while maintaining Earth system function. We focus on ‘wicked problems’ through the provisioning of ecosystem services at local to global scales and across varying temporal domains, as well as advancing EO approaches to monitor these processes. We use this research in our teaching within the Earth System Science BSc and MSc program, where we focus on processes of Land Change Science, Research design, and the ‘Unknowns’ in Earth System Science.