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
Vittis, Y., Folberth, C. , Bundle, S.-C., & Obersteiner, M. (2021). Restoring Nature at Lower Food Production Costs. Frontiers in Environmental Science 9 10.3389/fenvs.2021.672663.
Zabel, F., Müller, C., Elliott, J., Minoli, S., Jägermeyr, J., Schneider, J.M., Franke, J.A., Moyer, E., Dury, M., Francois, L., Folberth, C. , Liu, W., Pugh, T.A.M., Olin, S., Rabin, S.S., Mauser, W., Hank, T., Ruane, A.C., & Asseng, S. (2021). Large potential for crop production adaptation depends on available future varieties. Global Change Biology 27 (16) 3870-3882. 10.1111/gcb.15649.
Ruane, A.C., Phillips, M., Müller, C., Elliott, J., Jägermeyr, J., Arneth, A., Balkovič, J. , Deryng, D., Folberth, C. , Iizumi, T., Izaurralde, R.C., Khabarov, N. , Lawrence, P., Liu, W., Olin, S., Pugh, T., Rosenzweig, C., Sakurai, G., Schmid, E., Sultan, B., Wang, X., de Wit, A., & Yang, H. (2021). Strong regional influence of climatic forcing datasets on global crop model ensembles. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 300 e108313. 10.1016/j.agrformet.2020.108313.
Ringeval, B., Müller, C., Pugh, T.A.M., Mueller, N.D., Ciais, P., Folberth, C. , Liu, W., Debaeke, P., & Pellerin, S. (2021). Potential yield simulated by global gridded crop models: using a process-based emulator to explain their differences. Geoscientific Model Development 14 (3) 1639-1656. 10.5194/gmd-14-1639-2021.
Müller, C., Franke, J., Jägermeyr, J., Ruane, A.C., Elliott, J., Moyer, E., Heinke, J., Falloon, P.D., Folberth, C. , Francois, L., Hank, T., Izaurralde, R.C., Jacquemin, I., Liu, W., Olin, S., Pugh, T.A.M., Williams, K., & Zabel, F. (2021). Exploring uncertainties in global crop yield projections in a large ensemble of crop models and CMIP5 and CMIP6 climate scenarios. Environmental Research Letters 16 (3) e034040. 10.1088/1748-9326/abd8fc.