Stephan Pfister

14.4k total citations · 5 hit papers
145 papers, 9.9k citations indexed

About

Stephan Pfister is a scholar working on Environmental Engineering, Water Science and Technology and Ocean Engineering. According to data from OpenAlex, Stephan Pfister has authored 145 papers receiving a total of 9.9k indexed citations (citations by other indexed papers that have themselves been cited), including 82 papers in Environmental Engineering, 58 papers in Water Science and Technology and 41 papers in Ocean Engineering. Recurrent topics in Stephan Pfister's work include Environmental Impact and Sustainability (79 papers), Water-Energy-Food Nexus Studies (50 papers) and Water resources management and optimization (40 papers). Stephan Pfister is often cited by papers focused on Environmental Impact and Sustainability (79 papers), Water-Energy-Food Nexus Studies (50 papers) and Water resources management and optimization (40 papers). Stephan Pfister collaborates with scholars based in Switzerland, United States and Netherlands. Stephan Pfister's co-authors include Stefanie Hellweg, Annette Koehler, Bradley G. Ridoutt, Laura Scherer, Christopher Oberschelp, Peter Bayer, Livia Cabernard, Kuishuang Feng, Klaus Hubacek and Francesca Verones and has published in prestigious journals such as Nature Communications, SHILAP Revista de lepidopterología and Environmental Science & Technology.

In The Last Decade

Stephan Pfister

143 papers receiving 9.6k citations

Hit Papers

Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Freshwater Consump... 2009 2026 2014 2020 2009 2017 2017 2009 2021 250 500 750 1000
What are hit papers?

Hit papers significantly outperform the citation benchmark for their cohort. A paper qualifies if it has ≥500 total citations, achieves ≥1.5× the top-1% citation threshold for papers in the same subfield and year (this is the minimum needed to enter the top 1%, not the average within it), or reaches the top citation threshold in at least one of its specific research topics.

  1. Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Freshwater Consumption in LCA
    2009 1.0k citations Stephan Pfister, Annette Koehler et al. Environmental Science & Technology profile →
  2. Water scarcity assessments in the past, present, and future
    2017 752 citations Matti Kummu, Stephan Pfister et al. Earth s Future profile →
  3. The WULCA consensus characterization model for water scarcity footprints: assessing impacts of water consumption based on available water remaining (AWARE)
    2017 581 citations Anne‐Marie Boulay, Lorenzo Benini et al. profile →
  4. A revised approach to water footprinting to make transparent the impacts of consumption and production on global freshwater scarcity
    2009 492 citations Bradley G. Ridoutt, Stephan Pfister profile →
  5. Growing environmental footprint of plastics driven by coal combustion
    2021 284 citations Stephan Pfister, Stefanie Hellweg et al. profile →

Peers — A (Enhanced Table)

Peers by citation overlap · career bar shows stage (early→late) cites · hero ref

Name h Career Trend Papers Cites
Stephan Pfister Switzerland 48 5.0k 3.9k 2.0k 1.9k 1.3k 145 9.9k
Bin Chen China 59 5.8k 1.2× 2.8k 0.7× 1.0k 0.5× 1.1k 0.6× 601 0.5× 284 10.1k
Mesfin M. Mekonnen United States 44 6.9k 1.4× 9.4k 2.4× 4.2k 2.1× 3.7k 1.9× 1.1k 0.9× 122 17.1k
Yanpeng Cai China 56 2.1k 0.4× 3.9k 1.0× 2.5k 1.3× 1.2k 0.6× 956 0.8× 414 11.2k
Ashok K. Chapagain Netherlands 27 4.7k 0.9× 4.8k 1.2× 2.5k 1.2× 1.5k 0.8× 614 0.5× 41 8.1k
Manuele Margni Canada 51 6.3k 1.3× 1.2k 0.3× 538 0.3× 1.8k 0.9× 2.3k 1.8× 161 12.8k
Annette Koehler Switzerland 19 3.7k 0.7× 1.3k 0.3× 686 0.3× 946 0.5× 1.4k 1.1× 24 6.2k
Stefanie Hellweg Switzerland 65 8.0k 1.6× 1.5k 0.4× 790 0.4× 2.3k 1.2× 4.1k 3.3× 238 18.8k
Martina Flörke Germany 44 1.9k 0.4× 6.7k 1.7× 2.9k 1.4× 1.3k 0.7× 530 0.4× 114 11.1k
Francesca Verones Norway 37 2.7k 0.5× 835 0.2× 428 0.2× 1.5k 0.8× 1.3k 1.1× 105 7.1k
Sai Liang China 57 4.8k 1.0× 1.8k 0.5× 519 0.3× 467 0.2× 653 0.5× 208 9.2k

Countries citing papers authored by Stephan Pfister

Since Specialization
Citations

This map shows the geographic impact of Stephan Pfister's research. It shows the number of citations coming from papers published by authors working in each country. You can also color the map by specialization and compare the number of citations received by Stephan Pfister with the expected number of citations based on a country's size and research output (numbers larger than one mean the country cites Stephan Pfister more than expected).

Fields of papers citing papers by Stephan Pfister

Since Specialization
Physical SciencesHealth SciencesLife SciencesSocial Sciences

This network shows the impact of papers produced by Stephan Pfister. Nodes represent research fields, and links connect fields that are likely to share authors. Colored nodes show fields that tend to cite the papers produced by Stephan Pfister. The network helps show where Stephan Pfister may publish in the future.

Co-authorship network of co-authors of Stephan Pfister

This figure shows the co-authorship network connecting the top 25 collaborators of Stephan Pfister. A scholar is included among the top collaborators of Stephan Pfister based on the total number of citations received by their joint publications. Widths of edges represent the number of papers authors have co-authored together. Node borders signify the number of papers an author published with Stephan Pfister. Stephan Pfister is excluded from the visualization to improve readability, since they are connected to all nodes in the network.

All Works

20 of 20 papers shown
1.
Burg, Vanessa, et al.. (2025). Is ‘local food’ best? Evaluating agricultural greenhouses in Switzerland as an alternative to imports for reducing carbon footprint. Resources Environment and Sustainability. 20. 100209–100209. 1 indexed citations
2.
Frehner, Anita, et al.. (2025). Empirical evidence supports neither land sparing nor land sharing as the main strategy to manage agriculture–biodiversity tradeoffs. PNAS Nexus. 4(9). pgaf251–pgaf251. 1 indexed citations
3.
Berger, Markus, P.W. Gerbens-Leenes, Fatemeh Karandish, et al.. (2025). Complementary strengths of water footprint and life cycle assessments in analyzing global freshwater appropriation and its local impacts – Recommendations from an Interdisciplinary discussion series. Ecological Indicators. 174. 113458–113458. 4 indexed citations
4.
5.
Marques, Alexandra, Aletta Bonn, Antonio Arjona Castro, et al.. (2024). The role of nature's contributions to people in sustaining international trade of agricultural products. People and Nature. 6(2). 410–421. 2 indexed citations
6.
Scherer, Laura, Zhongxiao Sun, Ottar Michelsen, et al.. (2023). Biodiversity Impact Assessment Considering Land Use Intensities and Fragmentation. Environmental Science & Technology. 57(48). 19612–19623. 23 indexed citations
7.
Boulay, Anne‐Marie, Pascal Lesage, Ben Amor, & Stephan Pfister. (2021). Quantifying uncertainty for AWARE characterization factors. Journal of Industrial Ecology. 25(6). 1588–1601. 14 indexed citations
8.
Walker, Christie, Stephan Pfister, & Stefanie Hellweg. (2021). Methodology and optimization tool for a personalized low environmental impact and healthful diet specific to country and season. Journal of Industrial Ecology. 25(5). 1147–1160. 15 indexed citations
9.
Guillaume, Joseph H. A., Miina Porkka, Dieter Gerten, et al.. (2020). Giving Legs to Handprint Thinking: Foundations for Evaluating the Good We Do. Earth s Future. 8(6). 16 indexed citations
10.
Núñez, Montserrat, Ralph K. Rosenbaum, Shooka Karimpour, et al.. (2018). A Multimedia Hydrological Fate Modeling Framework To Assess Water Consumption Impacts in Life Cycle Assessment. Environmental Science & Technology. 52(8). 4658–4667. 21 indexed citations
11.
Raptis, Catherine, Justin M. Boucher, & Stephan Pfister. (2016). Assessing the environmental impacts of freshwater thermal pollution from global power generation in LCA. The Science of The Total Environment. 580. 1014–1026. 31 indexed citations
12.
Ridoutt, Bradley G. & Stephan Pfister. (2014). Response to Fang and Heijungs. Journal of Industrial Ecology. 18(1). 72–72. 2 indexed citations
13.
Hubacek, Klaus, Kuishuang Feng, Jan C. Minx, Stephan Pfister, & Naijun Zhou. (2014). Teleconnecting Consumption to Environmental Impacts at Multiple Spatial Scales. Journal of Industrial Ecology. 18(1). 7–9. 80 indexed citations
14.
Pfister, Stephan, Masaharu Motoshita, Bradley G. Ridoutt, R. Schenck, & D. Huizen. (2014). Progress toward an LCA impact assessment model linking land use and malnutrition-related DALYs.. 1007–1015. 4 indexed citations
15.
Benini, Lorenzo, et al.. (2014). Building consensus on a generic water scarcity indicator for LCA-based water footprint: preliminary results from WULCA. Joint Research Centre (European Commission). 142–149. 7 indexed citations
16.
Ridoutt, Bradley G. & Stephan Pfister. (2013). Towards an Integrated Family of Footprint Indicators. Journal of Industrial Ecology. 17(3). 337–339. 45 indexed citations
17.
Núñez, Montserrat, Stephan Pfister, Assumpció Antón, et al.. (2012). Assessing the Environmental Impact of Water Consumption by Energy Crops Grown in Spain. Journal of Industrial Ecology. 17(1). 90–102. 58 indexed citations
18.
Lin, Chen, Sangwon Suh, & Stephan Pfister. (2012). Does South‐to‐North Water Transfer Reduce the Environmental Impact of Water Consumption in China?. Journal of Industrial Ecology. 16(4). 647–654. 35 indexed citations
19.
Schryver, An M. De, Rosalie van Zelm, Sébastien Humbert, et al.. (2011). Value Choices in Life Cycle Impact Assessment of Stressors Causing Human Health Damage. Journal of Industrial Ecology. 15(5). 796–815. 45 indexed citations
20.
Bayer, Peter, Stephan Pfister, & Stefanie Hellweg. (2009). On the potential of Life Cycle Assessment in water resources management: focus on groundwater.. IAHS-AISH publication. 285–295. 2 indexed citations

Rankless uses publication and citation data sourced from OpenAlex, an open and comprehensive bibliographic database. While OpenAlex provides broad and valuable coverage of the global research landscape, it—like all bibliographic datasets—has inherent limitations. These include incomplete records, variations in author disambiguation, differences in journal indexing, and delays in data updates. As a result, some metrics and network relationships displayed in Rankless may not fully capture the entirety of a scholar's output or impact.

Explore authors with similar magnitude of impact

Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Bin Chen Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Mesfin M. Mekonnen Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Yanpeng Cai Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Ashok K. Chapagain Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Manuele Margni Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Annette Koehler Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Stefanie Hellweg Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Martina Flörke Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Francesca Verones Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Sai Liang
Rankless by CCL
2026