Michiel van der Molen

Dr. Michiel van der Molen serves as a Lecturer in the Meteorology and Air Quality group at Wageningen University & Research, where he actively contributes to environmental research through the WIMEK (Wageningen Institute for Environment and Climate Research) network. His work focuses on land-atmosphere exchange processes using eddy covariance techniques, with significant fieldwork conducted in Dutch forest ecosystems like the Loobos site.

His research spans critical environmental domains including land-atmosphere interactions, carbon cycle dynamics, climate extremes, and forest ecology. Van der Molen employs stable isotope analysis, ecosystem flux measurements, and modeling to investigate how European forests respond to nitrogen deposition, climate change, and extreme weather events. His interdisciplinary approach bridges meteorology, hydrology, and ecology to understand water-carbon coupling in terrestrial systems.

Recent publications reveal a strong trend toward integrating multi-scale observations with modeling, particularly examining forest responses to heatwaves and climate extremes. His work emphasizes practical applications for climate adaptation, carbon budgeting, and ecosystem service valuation, often through large international collaborations across Europe and tropical regions.

Van der Molen has co-supervised three PhD projects addressing critical environmental challenges: food security modeling in Ethiopia, urban carbon budget refinement, and fossil fuel emission tracking using carbon-14 signatures. These projects demonstrate his commitment to both fundamental process understanding and applied environmental solutions.

He actively contributes to the WIMEK research infrastructure, utilizing long-term monitoring sites like the Loobos flux tower (operational since 1996). His work involves coordinating international field campaigns, managing large eddy covariance datasets, and developing methodologies for partitioning ecosystem fluxes across forest strata.