Prof. Tobias Kümmerle
Biogeography
Prof. Kuemmerle’s team strives to better understand how land use change affects the environment and society. This includes assessments of spatial patterns and the underlying drivers of, for example, tropical deforestation, agricultural abandonment, or intensification of farming. Furthermore, the team studies how changes in land use affect the ecosystem services (e.g. food production or carbon storage) and biodiversity. As one focus the work group analyses trade-offs between use of resources and nature conservation, as well as how such trade-offs could be mitigated. The group also seeks to generate insights and records of high practical value for land use and nature conservation planning, and to assess the effectiveness of nature conservation measures. Prof. Kuemmerle’s regional focus is on Europe, the former Soviet Union and Latin America.
- the working group offers quantitative, spatially-explicit methods drawing from spatial ecology, geoinformatics, remote sensing, spatial statistics, econometrics, conservation planning, and wildlife biology
- equipment to carry out broad-scale surveys to gather primary data
- server and data storage infrastructure that allows for computationally demanding and/or big data projects
- different projects with environmental organisations