Silke Jacobs

Silke Jacobs is a Research Associate at Wageningen University & Research specializing in Sustainable Forest Ecosystems. Her work integrates ecological science with socio-economic policy analysis to advance evidence-based forest management practices across European contexts, with significant contributions to understanding restoration dynamics in unmanaged forests and policy frameworks.

Her primary research spans Forest Restoration, Environmental Economics, Biodiversity Conservation, and Ecological Economics, focusing on quantifying ecosystem service trade-offs and social acceptance of restoration initiatives. She examines how Serbia and Spain's regional contexts inform broader European forest policy, emphasizing climate-resilient management systems and biodiversity recovery metrics in degraded landscapes.

Recent publications demonstrate strong interdisciplinary trends, merging ecological indicators with socio-economic valuation frameworks to assess land degradation impacts. Her work consistently bridges academic research and practical policy implementation, particularly in European forest restoration scalability and nature-based solution economics.

Currently leading two Dutch government-funded LVVN projects (2023-2025), Jacobs directs research on climate-smart small-scale forest management and revitalization techniques with timber harvesting integration, demonstrating sustained grant acquisition capacity in sustainable forestry research.