Alumni profile: Martin Wilmking

Martin Wilmking

Martin Wilmking, a professor of landscape ecology at University Greifswald in Germany, earned his doctorate with SNRAS in 2003.

“I came to UAF out of pure passion for the north, my love of Alaska,” Wilmking said. “During my PhD studies I learned about the complex dynamics of northern ecosystems, their possibly drastic and sudden changes.

“Next to my passionate view of the landscapes, which I had from the beginning, during my studies I developed my scientific view of the land. To see the traces of past dynamics, to see the different players involved in shaping the current status of the ecological systems. Every new Ph.D. student I take on now in my job, I hope to give as much as I received back at UAF.  Alaska gave me self-confidence, sharpened my scientific intellect, but above all further fired up my love for wild places.”

As a graduate student, Wilmking mapped the forests in Denali National Park and Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. He examined why some trees respond positively to warming and some don’t.

Wilmking credited Professor Glenn Juday with helping him achieve his goals. The two continue their collaboration to this day and Wilmking serves as an adjunct professor for SNRAS. His dissertation was “The Treeline Ecotone in Interior Alaska – From theoretical concept to planning application and the science in between.”

Wilmking and Juday learned how to reconstruct past climates by studying tree rings.

Wilmking has been published in 70 scientific publications and secured $5.3 million (U.S. dollars) in research funds. He is a reviewer for many publications, including Science, Nature Climate Change, Arctic, New Phytologist and Annals of Forest Science.

He and his wife Gabriela Antunez de Mayolo Wilmking have three children.

Interesting facts about Wilmking: He wouldn’t give up on finding Bob Marshall’s (founder of the Wilderness Society) treeline experiment in the Brooks Range. Marshall had sowed white spruce seeds in a 12x12 plot to study tree-line advance in 1939. When Wilmking found the plot, he also found a note from Sam Wright, reporting that when Wright had found the plot in 1968 no seeds from Marshall had sprouted and he had replanted the plot with 100 seedlings of white spruce. When Wilmking relocated the plot in 2001, he found two seedlings still alive (see Wilmking and Ibendorf, 2004). He sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in 1998 and lived and sailed on a sailboat in the Mediterranean alone for nine months. Honors and Awards: 2012 Elected Board member of "Young Academy" (Die Junge Akademie) at the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina 2011-2012 Elected Chair of "Young Academy" (Die Junge Akademie) at the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina 2008 Selection into the "Young Academy" (Die Junge Akademie) at the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina 2006 Emmy Noether Junior Research Group from the German Science Foundation (DFG) 2004 Sofja Kovalevskaja Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation 2004 Emmy Noether Fellowship from the German Science Foundation (DFG) 2004 NOAA/UCAR Postdoctoral Fellowship for Global and Climate Change