Job title: Lecturer
Phone: 64 9 373 7599
Office: Human Sciences Building,10 Symonds Street, Auckland
Postal: School of Environment, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland
Email: l.schwendenmann@auckland.ac.nz

1996 BSc (Diplom FH) in Environmental Engineering, University of Applied Sciences, Bingen, Germany
1998 MSc in Resources Engineering, University of Karlsruhe, Germany
2003 Dr. rer. nat. in Landscape Ecology, Faculty of Geosciences and Geography, University of Göttingen, Germany

Luitgard Schwendenmann’s primary expertise is in carbon dynamics. For her dissertation and post doctoral research, Luitgard Schwendenmann, has worked extensively on below- and aboveground carbon dynamics and trace gas emissions in different land-use systems in the tropics (Brazil, Costa Rica and Panama). In the past, Luitgard Schwendenmann also investigated the hydrochemistry of a Brazilian mangrove ecosystem and studied the effects of fire and clear-cutting on soil properties and forest nutrition in a boreal ecosystem. An important component of Luitgard Schwendenmann’s work involves the use of stable isotopes (carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen) and radioisotopes (radon) with the aim of understanding and predicting how plants and ecosystems are (or will be) affected by natural and human disturbances such as those associated with land-use change and climate change. Luitgard Schwendenmann’s more recent research focuses on plant water use in multiple species plantation in Panama and on the effects of drought on the functioning of a cacao agroforestry system in Indonesia.

Journal articles (selected, 2005 onwards, italics indicates lead authorship by my students)

Carbon, trace gas fluxes, global change

Schwendenmann L., E. Veldkamp, G. Moser, D. Hölscher, M. Köhler, Y. Clough, I. Anas, G. Djajakirana, S. Erasmi, D. Hertel, D. Leitner, C. Leuschner, B. Michalzik, P. Propastin, A. Tjoa, T. Tscharntke & O. van Straaten, 2010. Effects of an experimental drought on the functioning of a cacao agroforestry system, Sulawesi, Indonesia. Global Change Biology 16, 1515-1530.

Pendall E., L. Schwendenmann, T. Rahn, J.B. Miller, P.P Tans & J.W.C. White, 2010. Land use and season affect fluxes of CO2, CH4, CO, N2O, H2 and isotopic source signatures in Panama: evidence from nocturnal boundary layer profiles. Global Change Biology 16, 2721-2736.

Derwisch S., L. Schwendenmann, R. Olschewski & D. Hölscher, 2009. Estimation and economic evaluation of aboveground carbon storage of Tectona grandis plantations in Western Panama. New Forests 37, 227-240.

Schwendenmann L. & E. Pendall, 2008. Response of soil organic matter dynamics to conversion from tropical forest to grassland as determined by long-term incubation. Biology and Fertility of Soils 44, 1053-1062.

Doff Sotta E., E. Veldkamp, L. Schwendenmann,  B. Rocha Guimarães, R. Keila Paixão, M. de Lourdes P. Ruivo, A.C. Lola da Costa & P. Meir, 2007. Effects of an induced drought on soil CO2 efflux and soil CO2 production in an Eastern Amazonian rainforest, Brazil. Global Change Biology 13, 2218–2229.

Schwendenmann L. & E. Pendall, 2006. Effects of forest conversion into grassland on soil aggregate structure and carbon storage in Central Panama: evidence from soil carbon fractionation and stable isotopes. Plant and Soil 288, 217-232.

Schwendenmann L. & E. Veldkamp, 2006. Long-term CO2 production from deeply weathered soils of a tropical rain forest: evidence for a potential positive feedback to climate warming. Global Change Biology 12, 1878-1893.

Schwendenmann L. & E. Veldkamp, 2005. The role of dissolved organic carbon, dissolved organic nitrogen and dissolved inorganic nitrogen in a tropical wet forest ecosystem. Ecosystems 8, 339-351.

Plant water use, ecohydrology

Schwendenmann L., D. Dierick, M. Köhler & D. Hölscher, 2010. Can deuterium tracing be used for reliably estimating water use of tropical trees and bamboo? Tree Physiology 30, 886-900.

Köhler M., L. Schwendenmann & D. Hölscher, 2010. Throughfall reduction in a cacao agroforest: tree water use and soil water budgeting. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 150, 1079-1089.

Kunert N., L. Schwendenmann & D. Hölscher, 2010. Tree water use in Panamanian forest plantations: effects of species, leaf phenology and seasonality. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 150, 411-419.

Nutrient cycling

Oxmann, J., L. Schwendenmann, & R. Lara, R., 2009. Interactions among phosphorus, pH and Eh in reforested mangroves, Vietnam: a three-dimensional spatial analysis. Biogeochemistry 96, 73-85.

Vandecar K.L., D. Lawrence, T. Wood, S.F. Oberbauer, R. Das, K. Tully. & L. Schwendenmann, 2009. Biotic and abiotic controls on diurnal fluctuations in labile soil phosphorus of a wet tropical forest. Ecology 90, 2547-2555.

Schwendenmann L., R. Riecke & R. Lara, 2006. Solute dynamics in a North Brazilian mangrove: the influence of sediment permeability and freshwater input. Wetlands Ecology and Management 14, 463-475.

TBA