SCIENTIST SAYS / NGC MONTHLY SERIES / JANUARY 2026

Dr RICHARD FUCHS – Co-developer of the HILDA + model 

Thu 15 January 2026,  NGC Communication Team

Dr Richard Fuchs. Photo:  NGC Communication Team 

SCIENTIST SAYS – OUR MONTHLY INTERVIEW SERIES Dr Richard Fuchs is the Group Leader of the Land Use Data Analysis and Modelling Group and Deputy Division Head of the Land Use Change and Climate research division at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany. Richard’s main research area focuses on land cover and use, their changes, and land management. In NextGenCarbon, he is co-leading Large Scale Spatial Analysis for Monitoring Key Terrestrial Ecosystems team (WP3), focusing on the development of HILDA+, a historical land cover land-use reconstruction model. Richard told us the story behind HILDA+ and highlighted the possibilities that the model offers.

Hey Richard – who are you and what is your role in NextGenCarbon?

My name is Richard Fuchs and I work at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Campus Alpine. In NextGenCarbon, my role is to improve land cover and land use change datasets, including land management, in order to assess the dynamics and the implications for the European and global carbon balance. With HILDA+, we act as a link between Earth observation and Earth system models. Our goal is to reduce uncertainties in the carbon balance and fluxes associated with land use, its changes and its management.

Please tell us more about the HILDA+ model you have been developing.

There is actually a funny anecdote. Being a remote senser by training, many years ago I went to my first EU project meeting as freshly started PhD. I remember that my supervisor back then, Martin Herold (GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences), gave me the advice: “Just go there and tell them you’re going to combine a few remote sensing data from the last three decades”. At that time, land use and its changes from Earth observation were just starting to be integrated into Earth System Models. I remember that, at this project meeting, Philippe Ciais (Laboratory for Climate and Environmental Sciences) was present, and he said: “Richard, we would need at least the last 100 years of data, is that possible?”. It was a funny moment and we all laughed, because it was clear that remote sensing alone would not be sufficient. From that day forward, I turned from a remote senser into a land-use modeller and HILDA+ was born.

Since then, HILDA+ has developed from a European model into a global model, supported by many EU projects. At KIT Campus Alpine, I was very lucky to hire Karina Winkler for her PhD. She was able to apply the conceptual framework of the European HILDA+ to today’s global version. Since then, we have continued to co-develop HILDA+ further together and we have many more plans. Today, HILDA+ serves as a land cover and land-use change input for many different Earth System models (e.g. Bookkeeping models, Land Surface Models, Dynamic Global Vegetation Models) as well as others (e.g. Integrated Assessment Models) for European and global greenhouse gas balancing and estimations, but also for many biodiversity, environmental and socio-economic studies.

With HILDA+, we act as a link between Earth observation and Earth system models. Our goal is to reduce uncertainties in the carbon balance and fluxes associated with land use, its changes and its management.

Currently, we are working on adding land management information into HILDA+. This includes, for example, crop types to cover more Plant Functional Types, fertiliser application to better capture nitrogen emissions, livestock densities to better capture methane emissions, and forestry to better capture carbon sinks and sources. My goal is for HILDA+ to become the state-of-the-art land-use database for global change assessments.

How is HILDA+ used in NextGenCarbon?

For NGC, we developed HILDA+ v3, a synergy product that harmonises high- to medium-resolution remote sensing-based datasets with long-term FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) statistics. It provides annual land-use and land-cover maps, as well as land-use transitions (gross changes) at global scale, with a 1x1 km resolution from 1960 to 2023. For the period 1900 to 1960 maps are based on extrapolated trends for six major land-use categories: urban, cropland, pasture/rangeland, forest, unmanaged grass/shrubland, sparse/no vegetation with additional sub-classes.

What excites you about the NextGenCarbon project?

I think what's really good is that it brings so many relevant partners together at one table, representing many different fields, disciplines and perspectives. Another major benefit is that the focus is much more on the input data this time. We hope to bring together all the exciting new data streams that are now available, such as remote sensing data and national statistics, so that Earth system modellers can benefit from it.

I also hope that we can gain new insights into how to standardise all the new and upcoming products, including re-classification, re-projection into data formats that are usable for Earth system modelling groups. Upcoming products include for example new remote sensing datasets (e.g. based on the new Sentinel missions) and annually updated land-use statistics, especially for land management, in an operationalised and harmonised way.

What expectations do you have from a societal point of view?

I think what's important, and probably also one of the grand challenges of the project, is to bring all these different data streams together in a harmonised and consistent way and show the society the usefulness and the merit of these data and activities. It is also important that we can implement it in an operational way and that these missions also feed into the broader scientific discourse, including socio-economic and policy-making areas.

I think it is very important that our results could lead to policy recommendations that can affect society. In NextGenCarbon, we are very well positioned with work that contributes to EU policy making, the Global Carbon Budget and IPCC activities. HILDA+ could hopefully contribute by reducing the uncertainties in (global) land use fluxes and how to understand its dynamics, drivers and causalities. So, NextGenCarbon has the chance to streamline the process with all this vast amount of new datasets, and I very much look forward to all the wonderful collaborations within the project.

Where can people find more information about you and HILDA+?

Website: https://www.imk-ifu.kit.edu/1845.php

ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Fuchs-4

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