Rate My Professor Julia Pongratz

Prof. Dr. Julia Pongratz is Professor of Physical Geography and Land Use Systems in the Faculty of Geosciences at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich), where she serves as Director of the Department of Geography. She completed studies in geography at LMU Munich and the University of Maryland, followed by a PhD in 2009 from the University of Hamburg and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, focusing on the early human impact on the Earth system under the supervision of Martin Claussen and Christian Reick. As a postdoctoral researcher at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology in Stanford, she worked in Ken Caldeira’s lab on food security and geoengineering. She returned to the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology as a Klaus Hasselmann Fellow and in 2013 received funding from the German Science Foundation (DFG) for an independent research group on forest management in the Earth system. Since 2018, she has held her professorship at LMU Munich and leads the Joint Group “Land Use in the Earth System” with the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. She is also spokesperson for the CAS Research Focus “Climate Futures” and a member of the CAS Young Center.

Pongratz’s research examines human-climate-vegetation feedbacks in the past and future, drivers of anthropogenic emissions, vegetation, climate, and Earth system modeling, as well as land management to mitigate climate change and achieve sustainability synergies. She has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers, including 19 in Nature and Science journals, such as the Global Carbon Budget annual reports (2017–2023, Earth System Science Data) and contributions to IPCC Assessment Reports as an author for Working Group 1 (Physical Science Basis) and Working Group 3 (Mitigation). Since 2017, she coordinates land-use emissions estimates for the Global Carbon Budget and contributes to UNEP Emissions Gap Reports. Her accolades include election to the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (2025), Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate (2020, 2023–2025), Bavarian Academy of Sciences (2024), LMU Teaching Innovation Awards (2020, 2022, 2023), Otto Hahn Medal (2009), and others. She chairs the CDRterra research program, advises the German government via the Scientific Advisory Board on Nature-based Solutions (since 2024) and the Council of Experts on Climate Change (since 2025), and serves on the Board of Reviewing Editors at Science, steering committees for C4MIP, LUMIP, and CDRMIP, and Future Earth’s Global Carbon Project and AIMES.