Christian Folberth

Senior Research Scholar

Agriculture, Forestry, and Ecosystem Services Research Group

Biodiversity and Natural Resources Program

Biography

Chris Folberth is a senior researcher in the Agriculture, Forestry, and Ecosystem Services Research Group of the IIASA Biodiversity and Natural Resources Program. The main focus of his research is process-based agro-ecosystem modeling to improve the understanding of the interactions between crop and soil management, climate impacts, and adaptation potentials. He also serves as the group’s liaison to community networks such as the Intersectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISIMIP) and the Global Gridded Crop Model Intercomparison (GGCMI) initiative.

Besides process-based modeling, he leads initiatives on data-driven and hybrid modeling to harness the combined advantages of both process-based and machine-learning methods. He also engages in transdisciplinary research that aligns methods and tools with stakeholder needs.

Prior to joining IIASA in 2013, he was a research assistant at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (EAWAG) and the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich), where he also acquired a doctoral degree. In the years 2015-2016, he completed a research fellowship at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, focusing on geographies of substance flows in the agro-food system.

Last update: 21 MAY 2024

Publications

Ippolito, T., Balkovič, J. , Skalský, R. , Folberth, C. , Krisztin, T. , & Neff, J. (2023). Predicting spatiotemporal soil organic carbon responses to management using EPIC-IIASA meta-models. Journal of Environmental Management 344 e118532. 10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.118532.

Ermolieva, T., Havlik, P. , Derci Augustynczik, A.L., Boere, E., Frank, S. , Kahil, T. , Wang, G., Balkovič, J. , Skalský, R. , Folberth, C. , Komendantova, N. , & Knopov, P. S. (2023). A Novel Robust Meta-Model Framework for Predicting Crop Yield Probability Distributions Using Multisource Data. Cybernetics and Systems Analysis 10.1007/s10559-023-00620-z.

Lutz, W. & Pachauri, S. (2023). Systems Analysis for Sustainable Wellbeing. 50 years of IIASA research, 40 years after the Brundtland Commission, contributing to the post-2030 Global Agenda. IIASA Report. Laxenburg, Austria: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) 10.5281/zenodo.8214208.

Molina Bacca, E.J., Stevanović, M., Bodirsky, B.L., Karstens, K., Chen, D.M.-C., Leip, D., Müller, C., Minoli, S., Heinke, J., Jägermeyr, J., Folberth, C. , Iizumi, T., Jain, A.K., Liu, W., Okada, M., Smerald, A., Zabel, F., Lotze-Campen, H., & Popp, A. (2023). Uncertainty in land-use adaptation persists despite crop model projections showing lower impacts under high warming. Communications Earth & Environment 4 (1) e284. 10.1038/s43247-023-00941-z.

Ermolieva, T., Skalský, R. , Balkovič, J. , Folberth, C. , Havlik, P. , Derci Augustynczik, A.L., Frank, S. , Kahil, T. , Wang, G., & Komendantova, N. (2023). Robust meta-model for investigating crop yields and Soil Organic Carbon dynamics and probability distributions depending on land use practices, soil characteristics and climate change: Insights for soil health preservation and Food security. In: Soil Physics and Healthy Cropland Cultivation, 4-7 August, 2023, Hangzhou, China.