Dr Joscha Becker has been appointed to the professorship Soil Ecology at the Institute of Biology and Environmental Sciences (IBU). Prior to that, he conducted research and taught at the University of Hamburg.
Becker studied geoecology at the University of Potsdam and completed his PhD in Göttingen in 2017, focusing on carbon and nutrient cycles of Mount Kilimanjaro, depending on climate and land use.
His research focuses on understanding how soil processes influence the carbon, nutrient and water cycles in our environment, and how these processes change due to climate change and land use. In doing so, he investigates the rhizosphere – the immediate area around plant roots – as well as small-scale structures in the soil, some of which are only a few millimetres in size. The aim is to understand the relationships between soil function and biogeochemical cycles and, on this basis, to develop principles for the sustainable management of soils.