Esther has a background in hydrology and ecology, having completed her studies at Wageningen University in 2020. After finishing her degree, she started working as a researcher at KWR Water, where she focused on projects related to ecohydrology and drought in the Netherlands.

For her PhD project, Esther will be studying the interactions between shifts in vegetation and hydrology in mountainous areas. She aims to understand how different types of vegetation in the mountains affect water flow and the potential implications of “greening” mountainous regions on water availability in the future. Esther will attempt to answer these questions by using a combination of field measurements in a Swiss catchment area and ecohydrological modeling on both small and large scales.