An Old-New Idea: Cluster Planting

Somidh Saha, Ph.D.

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) Associate Fellow, Senior Scientist, Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Head of Research Group, Sylvanus, Karlsruhe, Germany

Somidh is a forestry scientist with experience and interest in restoration and urban forestry. He studied zoology and forestry in India and Germany. Urban, peri-urban, natural, and semi-natural forests are declining due to urbanization, multiple anthropogenic impacts, diseases, and climate change-induced disturbances. Broadly, his research aims to restore forests after disturbances and make future forests more resilient to climate change impacts. Therefore, he tries to understand how changing forest structure and composition, from urban to rural/natural gradient, are related to ecological and biophysical processes and how those relations influence supply, synergy, and trade-offs between different types of benefits society gets from forests. Understanding the change in ecological and biophysical processes by climate change or urbanization interests him a lot. He also worked as a forester in India before switching to an academic career path. From 2008 to 2012, he did his Ph.D. on oak cluster planting at the University of Freiburg under the supervision of Prof. Jürgen Bauhus and Prof. Ulrich Kohnle. Oak group planting, a cost-effective type of cluster planting, has become well-established among forest owners and foresters in Germany after Somidh’s Ph.D. in 2012 demonstrated both the silvicultural and ecological benefits of group planting over conventional row planting. Currently, he leads a research group named “Sylvanus” at the Institute of Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany, a research university within the Helmholtz Association.