Anna van der Kaaden studies the spatial feedbacks between organisms and their environment and how these affect ecosystem resilience with modelling and data analysis. During her PhD, she investigated how feedbacks between cold-water mounds and the waterflow create hydrodynamic regimes around the mounds that affect the formation of cold-water coral reefs. These ecosystem engineering effects influence the resilience of cold-water coral reefs: they increase the food supply towards the reefs, but also might restrict the possibilities for cold-water corals to escape the adverse effects of global warming. She further found that scale-dependent feedbacks between cold-water coral reefs and their environment cause spatial pattern formation of cold-water coral reefs (’tiger reefs’), similar to arid vegetation (’tiger bushes’). 

She also teaches in courses of the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development and at the University College Utrecht, and she produces science communication videos.