Biography

Claas Nendel is co-head of the ZALF Research Area 4 „Simulation & Data Science“, in which he also leads the working group on „Landscape Modelling“. A studied geo-ecologist (University of Technology Carolo-Wilhelmina, Braunschweig, Germany; Agricultural University of Norway, Ås), he received his PhD from Braunschweig in 2002 and qualified for lecturer (Habilitation) at Berlin University of Technology in 2014. Since 2020 he is jointly appointed professor of Landscape Systems Analysis with the University of Potsdam. He has been working for more than 25 years in agricultural research on applied integrated modelling of water, nitrogen and carbon dynamics, organic matter decomposition, crop growth, product quality, pest and disease impact on crops, and farm economics in major agricultural crops. His main focus is the carry-over effect within crop rotations and the consequences for yield and product quality. Prof. Nendel is the principal developer of the MONICA model for biophysical processes in agro-ecosystems, which was established in the context of a national research project on foresight and potentials in rural areas under regional climate change. Prof. Nendel has served as the president of the European Society for Agronomy and is currently spokesman of the German Soil Science Society plant nutrition section and of the German Agricultural Research Alliance (DAFA) 's Climate Change Platform. He hosted the International Crop Modelling Symposium in Berlin in 2016 (320 participants), the German Society of Agronomy meeting in Berlin in 2019 (175 participants), the European Society for Agronomy Congress in Potsdam in 2022 (250 participants) and the DAFA conference on Agriculture under Climate Change in 2024 (500 particpants), and published more than 160 peer-reviewed journal articles, eleven book chapters and more than 250 contributions to national and international conferences.