Zurich, Switzerland

Isabelle Helfenstein

Environmental Scientist

Placeholder — I study how landscapes change: vegetation, water, and the traces people leave in both. This site holds my CV and occasional field-notes.

Placeholder portrait of Isabelle Helfenstein

About

Placeholder — Isabelle is an environmental scientist working at the intersection of ecology and data. She holds a PhD on vegetation dynamics in pre-alpine landscapes, combining field campaigns with remote sensing.

Placeholder — away from the desk she is usually outdoors on the Lägern ridge, notebook in one pocket and a hand lens in the other. The contour lines framing this site are drawn from its height map.

Placeholder photo of the Lägern ridgeline
Lägern, first light
Placeholder photo of moss cushions
Moss after rain
Placeholder photo of a contour map
Field map, folded twice

Experience & Education

Experience

  1. 2024 — today

    Postdoctoral Researcher

    Placeholder Institute for Landscape Ecology, Zurich

    Placeholder — leads field campaigns on vegetation change, builds analysis pipelines for multispectral imagery, and writes the occasional paper.

  2. 2020 — 2024

    Doctoral Researcher

    Placeholder University, Zurich

    Placeholder — designed and ran the long-term monitoring plots behind the dissertation and supervised MSc field courses.

  3. 2018 — 2020

    Scientific Assistant

    Placeholder Environmental Consultancy, Baden

    Placeholder — biodiversity surveys, impact assessments, and GIS work for infrastructure projects across the canton.

Education

  1. 2020 — 2024

    PhD (Dr. sc. nat.) in Environmental Sciences

    Placeholder University, Zurich

    Placeholder — dissertation on detecting forest stress from time series of satellite imagery.

  2. 2018 — 2020

    MSc in Environmental Sciences

    Placeholder University, Zurich

    Placeholder — thesis on canopy phenology from drone imagery.

  3. 2015 — 2018

    BSc in Geography

    Placeholder University, Zurich

    Placeholder — minor in computational science; field courses in the Alps and the Jura.

Skills

Field & Lab

  • Vegetation surveys
  • Soil sampling
  • Species identification
  • Placeholder skill

Data & Analysis

  • R
  • Python
  • QGIS
  • Remote sensing
  • Placeholder skill

Languages

  • German (native)
  • English (fluent)
  • French (good)

Latest field-notes

Moss, two days after rain

Placeholder — an untranslated note: it exists only on the English site, and per ADR 0002 the German site simply doesn't know it exists. It has no summary eit…

  • field

Walking the Lägern ridgeline

Placeholder — notes from a slow traverse of the ridge that gave this site its contour lines.

  • Lägern
  • geology

All field-notes →

Contact

Placeholder — interested in working together, or just want to talk landscapes? A contact form will land here; until then, this text holds the spot.