Julia studied Geography at the JMU Würzburg with focus on physical geography. After finishing her bachelor’s degree, she started to study Applied Physical Geography in Würzburg. During this time, Julia worked as a research assistant and focused within her master’s thesis on soil water balance in forests in northern Bavaria using geophysical methods and LiDAR data. In August 2021 she started her PhD at the chair of Botany II (Würzburg) within the project “Beechdecline” supervised by Prof. Dr. Bernhard Schuldt. The topic is about drought-induced tree mortality of European beech affected by small-scale heterogeneity in soil properties and tree neighbourhood composition. In October 2022 she joined the Earth Observation Research Hub for the analysis of satellite data and mobile laser scans within her project.