Irina Heiß

Irina Heiß is a researcher at the Department of Computational Landscape Ecology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ. She is part of the junior research group AgriScape since 2023, focusing on improving ecosystem services through agricultural management changes.

Her research involves the Agricultural Production SIMulator (APSIM) model to evaluate the impact of agricultural practices on biophysical processes and ecosystem services in agroecosystems, with a specific emphasis on multifunctionality and spatial analysis using GIS in R.

In 2025, she co-authored a study in Ecological Indicators proposing an opportunity map approach to spatially allocate management practices for enhancing ecosystem services. This work integrates computational modeling with empirical data on soil resources and land-use conflicts.

She holds an M.Sc. in Environmental Sciences from Stockholm University (2022) and a B.Sc. in Geosciences from the University of Göttingen (2019). Her academic journey includes research assistant roles at the Thünen Institute and student assistant experience at the University of Potsdam.

Contact: irina.heiss@ufz.de