Viktoria Wagner becomes a new Chief Editor of JVS/AVS

We welcome Viktoria Wagner as a new Chief Editor of the Journal of Vegetation Science and Applied Vegetation Science! Viktoria replaces Meelis Pärtel, who has decided to step down as a Chief Editor after 13 years of service.

Viktoria is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada. After obtaining degrees at the University of Göttingen (Dipl.) and University of Halle-Wittenberg (PhD), Germany, she conducted post-doctoral research as a Feodor Lynen Fellow at the University of Montana, USA, and as a project member and Marie Curie Fellow at Masaryk University, Czech Republic. Her research focuses on plant community ecology, with current and recent projects exploring the patterns and mechanisms of non-native plant invasions, invasive species management, and inventories of rare habitat types. Her lab tackles research questions through data mining, field observations, and experiments. While most of her work has focused on grasslands and meadows, she and her lab members have widened the scope of their study systems to a wide range of vegetation types.

Viktoria is an active member of the International Association of Vegetation Science and currently serving on its council and leading its Social Media & Website and Carbon Footprint Committees. She has been an Editorial Board member and Associate Editor for Applied Vegetation Science since 2019 and an Associate Editor for Vegetation Classification and Survey since 2020. With this experience on her shoulders, she is looking forward to her role as Chief Editor for the Journal of Vegetation Science. When not in front of her computer or in a meeting, Viktoria enjoys botanizing, hiking with her family, drawing, and reading history books.

We are grateful to Meelis Pärtel for serving our journals for so many years. He became a Chief Editor in 2009 and served as Chair of the JVS/AVS Editors until 2017. Then he was a Receiving Editor for the Journal of Vegetation Science. As a student of Eddy van der Maarel, the founder of the journals, Meelis always followed Eddy’s principles of maintaining high scientific standards while being friendly and helpful to authors. We appreciate that Meelis remains with us as Associate Editors of the Journal of Vegetation Science despite his heavy load of scientific and administrative work.

From 1 March 2022, the team of the JVS/AVS Chief Editors includes Valério Pillar and Viktoria Wagner (both primarily responsible for the Journal of Vegetation Science), Jodi Price (primarily responsible for Applied Vegetation Science) and Milan Chytrý (Chair of the Editors, responsible for the overall functioning of the journals).