A Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Biodiversity and Environmental Research (CBER) at University College London (UCL), Vivienne Groner contributes to the SHEFS project with her interdisciplinary background in Earth system science and biology, her practical expertise in climate and vegetation modelling, and her personal research interest in past, present and future changes in the Earth system. Specifically, she investigates the effects of land use change and climate change on biodiversity in Southern Africa and assesses feedbacks on ecosystem services related to food systems and human well-being. She did her PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, where she studied the effects of plant functional diversity on climate-vegetation interaction towards the end of the ‘green Sahara’.