Christian Folberth
Senior Research Scholar
Agriculture, Forestry, and Ecosystem Services Research Group
Biodiversity and Natural Resources Program
Biography
Chris Folberth is a senior researcher in the Agriculture, Forestry, and Ecosystem Services Research Group of the IIASA Biodiversity and Natural Resources Program. The main focus of his research is process-based agro-ecosystem modeling to improve the understanding of the interactions between crop and soil management, climate impacts, and adaptation potentials. He also serves as the group’s liaison to community networks such as the Intersectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP) and the Global Gridded Crop Model Intercomparison (GGCMI) initiative.Besides process-based modeling, he leads initiatives on data-driven and hybrid modeling to harness the combined advantages of both process-based and machine-learning methods. He also engages in transdisciplinary research that aligns methods and tools with stakeholder needs.
Prior to joining IIASA in 2013, he was a research assistant at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (EAWAG) and the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich), where he also acquired a doctoral degree. In the years 2015-2016, he completed a research fellowship at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, focusing on geographies of substance flows in the agro-food system.
Last update: 21 MAY 2024
Publications
Goulart, H., van der Wiel, K., Folberth, C. , Balkovič, J. , & van den Hurk, B. (2021). Storylines of weather-induced crop failure events under climate change. Earth System Dynamics 12 (4) 1503-1527. 10.5194/esd-12-1503-2021.
Carr, T.W., Balkovič, J. , Dodds, P.E., Folberth, C. , & Skalský, R. (2021). The impact of water erosion on global maize and wheat productivity. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 322 e107655. 10.1016/j.agee.2021.107655.
Jägermeyr, J., Müller, C., Ruane, A.C., Elliott, J., Balkovič, J. , Castillo, O., Faye, B., Foster, I., Folberth, C. , Franke, J.A., Fuchs, K., Guarin, J.R., Heinke, J., Hoogenboom, G., Iizumi, T., Jain, A.K., Kelly, D., Khabarov, N. , Lange, S., Lin, T.-S., Liu, W., Mialyk, O., Minoli, S., Moyer, El.J., Okada, M., Phillips, M., Porter, C., Rabin, S.S., Scheer, C., Schneider, J.M., Schyns, J.F., Skalský, R. , Smerald, A., Stella, T., Stephens, H., Webber, H., Zabel, F., & Rosenzweig, C. (2021). Climate impacts on global agriculture emerge earlier in new generation of climate and crop models. Nature Food 2 873-885. 10.1038/s43016-021-00400-y.
Zhang, X., Yao, G., Vishwakarma, S., Dalin, C., Komarek, A.M., Kanter, D.R., Davis, K.F., Pfeifer, K., Zhao, J., Zou, T., D'Odorico, P., Folberth, C. , Rodriguez, F.G., Fanzo, J., Rosa, L., Dennison, W., Musumba, M., Heyman, A., & Davidson, E.A. (2021). Quantitative assessment of agricultural sustainability reveals divergent priorities among nations. One Earth 4 (9) 1262-1277. 10.1016/j.oneear.2021.08.015.
Franke, J.A., Müller, C., Minoli, S., Elliott, J., Folberth, C. , Gardner, C., Hank, T., Izaurralde, R.C., Jägermeyr, J., Jones, C.D., Liu, W., Olin, S., Pugh, T.A.M., Ruane, A.C., Stephens, H., Zabel, F., & Moyer, E.J. (2021). Agricultural breadbaskets shift poleward given adaptive farmer behavior under climate change. Global Change Biology 28 167-181. 10.1111/gcb.15868.