Elisa Stefaniak
Research Scholar
Biodiversity, Ecology, and Conservation Research Group
Biodiversity and Natural Resources Program
Biography
Elisa Stefaniak is a research scholar in the Biodiversity, Ecology, and Conservation Research Group of the IIASA Biodiversity and Natural Resources Program. She works on modeling water-vegetation interaction and has recently joined the One Health project, Biodiversity and Land-use Objectives for Optimal Management (BLOOM), which focuses on modeling the relationship between biodiversity and zoonosis spillover in the context of forests and conservation.
In her vegetation modeling work she works with the PlantFATE model to predict the effects of climate change and drought on forests. She also investigated carbon storage allocation and plant stress during her PhD and immunological dynamics in fruit trees using genomics during an internship for a citrus producer in Australia.
Using her background in computer science, she has been spearheading the coupling of the PlantFATE and Community Water (CWatM) models to address catchment wide impacts of forests on water availability and vice versa. She is also interested in modeling the emergent properties in forests at different scales, from a single organ to the landscape scale. Using both theoretical and systems analysis approaches, she develops models based in eco-evolutionary theory that can predict plant responses to stress.
As of 2025, Stefaniak has been leading the BLOOM project, which aims to combine different models: economic, forest, ecosystem, and zoonotic, to explore the socio-ecological effects on zoonosis of Ebola. She leads a transdisciplinary team of economists, ecologists, mathematicians, and sociologists in the development of a systems analysis framework to explore conservation policy scenarios and their impact on zoonosis likelihood, in an attempt to find win-win conservation strategies in vulnerable ecological areas.
Last update: 01 JUL 2025
Publications
Martin, J. , Wong, C., Stefaniak, E. , & Freiberger, M. (2026). BLOOM: Biodiversity and Land-use Objectives for Optimal Management. IIASA , Laxenburg, Austria.
Hofhansl, F. , Singh, S., Stefaniak, E. , Maxwell, T., & Joshi, J. (2025). Simulating plant functional acclimation and trait evolution using an eco-evolutionary vegetation model (PlantFATE). DOI:10.5194/egusphere-egu25-11302. In: EGU General Assembly 2025, 27 April-02 May 2025, Vienna.
Stefaniak, E. , Tissue, D., Dewar, R., Medlyn, B., & Piper, F. (2024). Optimal carbon storage during drought. Tree Physiology 44 (13) 34-45. 10.1093/treephys/tpae032.
Hofhansl, F. , Maxwell, T., Franklin, O. , Stefaniak, E. , & Joshi, J. (2024). Simulating ecosystem adaptation in response to a changing climate by capturing belowground plant functional traits in an eco-evolutionary vegetation model (Plant-FATE). In: The future of sustainable land use across ecosystems, landscapes and biomes, 9th — 13th September 2024, Freising, Germany.
Stefaniak, E. , de Bruijn, J. , Smilovic, M. , Artuso, S., Martin, J. , Maxwell, T., Joshi, J., & Hofhansl, F. (2024). Modelling Water and Biodiversity: Coupling a dynamic eco-evolution trait-based vegetation model with a community water model. DOI:10.5194/egusphere-egu24-16184. In: EGU General Assembly 2024, 14-19 April 2024, Vienna.