Daniela Dalmonech

Daniela Dalmonech is an Italian researcher working in the field of forest ecology and ecosystem modelling. Her academic background combines environmental engineering and forest science: after earning a Master’s degree in Environmental Engineering at the University of Trento (Italy) - where she developed strong skills in numerical modelling - she attained a PhD in Forest Ecology at the University of Tuscia (Viterbo, Italy). She later continued her scientific career abroad with a Marie Curie ITN postdoctoral position at the Max Planck Institute for Biogechemistry in Jena (Germany).

Her key research focuses on understanding how carbon "flows" within terrestrial ecosystems, and how carbon-related processes respond to environmental variability and human influence. In 2020, she started collaborating with the Forest Modeling Laboratory at CNR-ISAFOM as an independent researcher. Since then, she has played a central role in the development of the 3D-CMCC-FEM model. This model is used to simulate the complex interactions governing forest productivity and the biogeochemical cycles of carbon and nitrogen. In addition to model development, she works extensively on analysing the simulations and interpreting how forests may behave under current and future climate conditions.

Dalmonech has also contributed to applied research projects, such as OT4CLIMA, where she worked with the University of Basilicata on modelling Gross Primary Production (GPP), a key indicator of ecosystem functioning. Today, she serves as a researcher technologist at CNR-ISAFOM and contributes to the HORIZON Europe Projects ForestNavigator and OptFor-EU and collaborates with the National Biodiversity Future Centre, contributing expertise on forest dynamics and ecosystem modelling.

Beyond her research activities, she is engaged in the scientific community. She has acted as Guest Editor for the journal Forests, curating a special issue dedicated to modelling forest responses to climate change, and she is currently editor for the topical collection "Climate impacts on European forests and their mitigation potentials and ecosystem service provisioning" for the journal Regional Environmental Change. She has authored and co-authored several scientific publications and regularly presents her work at conferences.

Overall, Daniela Dalmonech’s work bridges ecological theory, numerical modelling and real-world environmental challenges, helping to improve our understanding of how forests function and how they might respond to a rapidly changing climate.