My research focuses on understanding and assessing the impact of conservation interventions and in particular how resources, management, governance, and socio-economic context influences the effectiveness and performance of protected areas. I primarily address this through a global lens, utilizing large global dataset from conservation organizations, research institutions as well as from remote-sensing sources to develop correlative models of what predicts conservation success when possible through the use of quasi-experimental methods and setups. This work currently has three (3) overarching themes:

Global patterns of anthropogenic threats to biodiversity

Funded by the Sapere Aude Research leader programme of the Independent Research fund Denmark, I work on mapping the distribution of threats to biodiversity to gain a deeper understanding of what drives global patterns as well as how they relate to conservation interventions. Using the IUCN Red List data for all amphibians, birds, and mammals I have together with colleagues generated global maps of the ‘likelihood of impact’ for the five main threats to biodiversity identified by IPBES. Using these maps, I am interested in understanding what socio-economic, biological, and geological factors explains the geographical patterns of threats and how they relate to conservation interventions and the overarching human drivers of biodiversity declines. I am also interested in how threats interact to identify areas under higher threat than predicted by simply overlaying the likelihoods of individual ones.

Understanding the impact of protected area

Protected areas are amongst the most important conservation interventions and cover more than 15% of Earths terrestrial surface with international ambitions to increase that number to 30% by 2030. Thus, understanding whether protected areas safeguard biodiversity and the livelihood of people living in and around them is paramount. I investigate these questions using data on management effectiveness, socio-economic context, as well as conservation outcomes (e.g., threat reduction or changes in biodiversity) and applying quasi-experimental approaches (like statistical matching) to gain a deeper understanding of what makes protected areas effective.

Improving the effectiveness of protected areas

How to measure and assess the effectiveness of protected areas required balancing the cost and time committed to evaluations, with capturing the right information to improve effectiveness at the site-level. At the same time, information from protected area assessments can generate data that can be used to explore the question of effectiveness more broadly and identify best-practices. Through our involvement in the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas’ Management Effectiveness Specialist Group I work with managers across to world to understand how to best capture the essential elements of management for tracking progress at the global and national levels, as well as how that can be used to improve evidence-based conservation practices on the ground.

RESEARCH GROUP

Antonella Gorosabel: Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow joined in 2023 and interested in understanding how the expansion of renewable energy can happen in way that minimized impact on biodiversity. Currently working on understanding the co-occurrence of renewable energy production and other threats to help guide expansion of a green transition.

Harith Farooq: postdoc joined in 2022 and interested in understanding patterns of threats to biodiversity and how threat maps can help inform conservation priorities. Also working on how soundscapes can help to measure biodiversity in particular how this relates to management practices.

Helena Neri Alves Pinto: Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow joined in 2023 and interested in understanding how protected and conserved areas, in particular OECMs, can help to conserve biocultural diversity as well as how the threat of expansion of cattle and soy impacts local communities and biodiversity. Current work focuses in particular on the conservation of medicinal plants.

Katherine Pulido Chadid: PhD student joined in 2022 and interested in understanding the relationship between threats to biodiversity and protected and conserved areas as well as how protected and conserved areas can be effective in mitigating threats.

MSc and BSc students (current)

• Freja Engberg Willumsen (MSc) - focused on understanding the Impact of rewilding on fish re-colonization and behavior in eelgrass transplantations (co-supervised with Mikael van Deurs from DTU Aqua)
• Anna Østergaard Caggese (BSc) – focused on understanding the role of Other Effective Area-Based conservation measures (OECMs) in conserving biodiversity (co-supervised with Helena Alves Pinto).
• Sofie Banke Poulsen (MSc) – focused on understanding the impact of forest conservation interventions on indiginous land in La Moskitia, Honduras (co-supervised with Mattias Borg Rasmussen and Naia Morueta-Holme).
• Michella Molin (MSc) – focused on understanding the link between dietary shift towards a plant-based diet and minimizing Denmark’s agricultural land use for mitigating climate change and improving biodiversity. (co-supervised with Christian Bugge Henriksen).
• If you are interested in nature conservation and would like to do your MSc thesis project on topics related to protected area effectiveness and/or threats to biodiversity - feel free to contact me.

MSc and BSc students (past)

• Rikke Krabben (BSc) - focused on understanding the role of protected areas in India on the tiger conservation and reducing human-wildlife conflicts. 
• Galatea Goudeli (MSc) – focused on understanding the effect of hunting on mammals in the Udzungwa Mountains in Tanzania (co-supervised with Neil D. Burgess)
• Paolo Trimarchi (MSc) – focused on understanding impacts of Payment for Ecosystem Services schemes in the Comoros Island with Dahari and Bagor University 
• Elizabeth Nørregaard (MSc) – focused on understanding the effectiveness of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in Indonesia in collaboration with WWF-US 
• Amanda Lillelund Kjersner (MSc) – focused on understanding the effectiveness of Canadian protected areas (co-supervised with Neil D. Burgess)
• Anna Elmgreen (MSc) – focused on understanding the role of evidence in the management of Canadian protected areas (co-supervised with Neil D. Burgess)
• Julie Munk Sejer (MSc) – focused on understanding the role of protected areas globally in mitigating threats to biodiversity
• Claire Ract (Erasmus MSc) – focused on understanding conservation priorities and the role of different protected area types in Tanzania (co-supervised with Neil D Burgess)
• Jana Tabea Schultz (MSc) – focused on understanding the role of protected areas globally in conserving genetic diversity (co-supervised with David Nogués-Bravo)
• Alexander Jakob Kolsboe Knarberg (BSc) – focused on understanding how the concept of “Ecological integrity” is used in nature management
• Alanah Hayley Lewis (MSc) – focused on developing a temporal indicator to monitor changes in the effectiveness of protected area management (co-supervised with Neil D Burgess and Michael Krabbe Borregaard)
• Maria Therese Bager Olsen – focused on understanding wildlife trade and CITES (co-supervised with Neil D Burgess)
• Louise Kjær-Hansen – focused on understanding trends in utilized species in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London (co-supervised with Neil D Burgess)

I organize the MSc course ‘International Nature Conservation’ which runs in block 3 (ca. February to April) each year. The course focuses on providing students with an overview of the key topics related to conservation science following the Pressure-State-Response framework.

I also contribute to the summer courses (block 5) ‘Herpetology’ and ‘Area-based Management’ offered by the UN at the World Maritime University in Malmö respectively.

Education

• 2014 PhD in conservation Biology, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
• 2008 MS in Biology, (Cand.scient.), University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
• 2004 - 2005 Graduate student (Snyder lab.), Department of Entomology, Washington State University, USA.
• 2004 BS in Biology (Bach.scient.), University of Copenhagen, Denmark. 

Previous employments

2016 - 2020     Research Fellow, Conservation Science Group, University of Cambridge, UK

2014 - 2015     Postdoc, Center for Macroecology, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen.

2009 – 2010     Research assistant, Center for Macroecology, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen.
2009 – 2010      High school Teacher, Det Frie Gymnasium, Copenhagen.
2007 – 2008      Scientific employee, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen.
2007                 Project coordinator, Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen.

 THIS CV IS NOT REGULARLY UPDATED - SEE https://www.linkedin.com/in/jgeldmann/

I sit on the boards of WWF Denmark and Danmarks Naturfond