Susanne Kortsch

Email: susanne.kortsch@helsinki.fi
ORCID: 0000-0002-6495-4781
Google Scholar: View profile

Research Interests

  • Marine community ecology
  • Food web ecology
  • Ecological networks
  • Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning
  • Global change ecology
  • Carbon cycling
  • Ecological modelling

About

I am a marine community and food web ecologist and Academy Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki, based at Tvärminne Zoological Station. My research seeks to understand how biodiversity and species interactions shape ecosystem functioning, resilience, and carbon cycling in a rapidly changing world.

I combine field observations, mesocosm experiments, ecological network analysis, DNA metabarcoding, and ecosystem modelling to investigate how environmental change restructures ecological communities and alters the flow of energy and carbon through marine food webs. While much of my current research focuses on Baltic Sea coastal ecosystems, I have also worked extensively on food webs in the Arctic, North Sea, Atlantic Ocean, and Southern Ocean, as well as terrestial plant-pollinator communties.

🌊 Heatwave-driven rewiring of coastal food webs

How do marine heatwaves reorganise ecological networks and alter ecosystem functioning? This project combines experiments and modelling to understand how climate extremes reshape coastal ecosystems.

➡️ Learn more on the Research Projects page.

🌿 Carbon cycling in Baltic coastal habitats

Using food-web models and carbon-flow analyses, we investigate how different coastal habitats process, retain, and export carbon, improving our understanding of blue carbon and coastal ecosystem functioning.

➡️ Learn more on the Research Projects page.

❄️ Climate-driven changes in Arctic food webs

My previous research demonstrated how climate-driven species redistributions restructure Arctic marine food webs, revealing foood web rewiring associated with warming oceans.

➡️ Learn more on the Research Projects page.

🕸️ Ecological network theory

I apply and develop quantitative methods for analysing ecological networks and studying how biodiversity, species interactions, and ecosystem functioning are linked across ecosystems.

➡️ Learn more on the Research Projects page.