Rate My Professor Sabine Both

Dr. Sabine Both serves as Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the School of Environmental and Rural Science at the University of New England. She joined the university in 2018 as Lecturer in Vegetation Management, following prior appointments at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Germany. Both earned her PhD in Biology from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in 2011, with a dissertation titled 'Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning across structural strata in subtropical forests in China.' Prior to that, she obtained a Diploma in Biology—equivalent to B.Sc. and M.Sc.—from the same institution in 2008, researching 'Trait diversity in woody species in a subtropical forest in Dujiangyan (Sichuan, China).' Her professional experience encompasses extensive fieldwork exceeding 29 months across global forest ecosystems, including observational studies in subtropical China, small- and large-scale forest biodiversity and ecosystem functioning experiments, and pristine and selectively logged tropical rainforests in Malaysian Borneo.

Both's academic interests center on tropical and subtropical species-rich forest ecosystems, particularly the interplay between biodiversity and ecosystem functions. Her research explores interactions involving tree species richness, functional diversity, plant-plant dynamics, plant-soil relationships, and trophic levels through both observational and experimental approaches. She has analyzed over 30 structural, physiological, and anatomical traits from nearly 300 tree species in Bornean tropical rainforests to assess their role in ecosystem functions like productivity, decomposition, nutrient cycling, herbivory, habitat invasibility, and exotic species invasion. In 2018 and 2019, she was awarded Robine Enid Wilson Grants to investigate plant-herbivore interactions responding to elevation and functional plant traits along gradients in New England National Park, New South Wales. Notable publications include 'Logging and soil nutrients independently explain plant trait expression in tropical forests' (New Phytologist, 2019), 'Strong positive biodiversity–productivity relationships in a subtropical forest experiment' (Science, 2018), 'Canopy structure and topography jointly constrain the microclimate of human-modified tropical landscapes' (Global Change Biology, 2018), 'Land use not litter quality is a stronger driver of decomposition in hyper-diverse tropical forest' (Ecology and Evolution, 2017), and recent contributions such as 'Canopy functional trait variation across Earth's tropical forests' (Nature, 2025) and 'Thresholds for adding degraded tropical forest to the protected estate' (Nature, 2024). Her studies inform forest management amid global environmental changes.