Dr. Hao Xia Awarded GLP Early-Career Seed Grant

15 September 2025

Photo: Hao Xia

Dr. Hao Xia, a postdoctoral researcher in the Sustainability and Global Change group at FNK, has recently been awarded an Early-Career Seed Grant by the Global Land Programme (GLP) in partnership with START International. These competitive grants provide early-career researchers and practitioners with the resources necessary to advance workshops, collaborations, fieldwork, and local engagement activities that address key challenges in land system science.

The GLP Seed Grants are part of the organization’s Early Career Network initiative. This initiative seeks to empower the next generation of land system scientists and foster international collaboration at the interface of research, policy, and practice. In 2025, six early-career scholars from around the world were chosen for their innovative, solutions-oriented contributions to land system science.

Dr. Xia was recognized for his ongoing research project, "Monitoring Progress Toward Adequate and Representative Protection of the Arctic Tundra," which is part of the larger project, "Arctic Squeezing and Tundra Protection: Opportunities, Planning, and Communications” (SQUEEZE). This project, funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space, is led by Prof. Uwe A. Schneider and Dr. Kerstin Jantke as co-principal investigators at FNK.

With the support of the GLP Seed Grant, Dr. Xia and his colleagues — Dr. Kerstin Jantke, Professor Uwe A. Schneider, and partners in the SQUEEZE project — will strengthen their collaboration with local Arctic communities and stakeholders. Together, they will develop a sustainable and widely accepted network of protected areas across the circum-Arctic tundra.