News
Combining satellite data and agricultural statistics to map grassland management intensity in Europe
Collecting scats in the Gran Chaco - not an easy job!
Our PhD student Asunción Semper-Pascual has recently carried out her fieldwork in the Argentinian Dry Chaco to collect data for one of her thesis chapters. Here you can find a report of her experience.
Land Systems Version 2 & associated Biodiversity Loss
As part of our recent paper by Kehoe et al. (2017), we developed a global 1km land systems map that delineates between the major land use classes and includes low, medium, and intensive cropland and pasture. The map also includes natural areas suitable and not suitable for future cropland expansion.
Classical land rent theory fails to explain land-use dynamics in the Chaco
We use land-use/cover change maps, interviews and expert knowledge to identify different agricultural frontiers across the Chaco. Analyzing these frontiers reveals that existing land rent theory does not explain the land-use dynamics in the Chaco without appropriately considering the different actors levels.
Call for applications for a PhD position on Conservation Telecouplings
We are now accepting applications for a new PhD position in our lab. this PhD will focus on conceptualizing and analyzing conservation telecouplings, with a focus on South America. The PhD position will be in the context of our newly funded European PhD Training Network COUPLED (http://coupled-itn.eu). The focus of this graduate school will be on operationalizing the telecouplings concept in order to assess and solve sustainability challenges connected to land use. Recruiting has started, the application deadline is 24 November, 2017.
Conference for protection of old growth forest in Europe – We go, do You?
In order to protect the last old-growth forests, you need to know where they are! We will present our 'Map of primary forests of Europe' at the Conference for protection of old growth forest in Europe (Brussels, 13-14th September 2017).
Carving up the tropics for dinner
We highlight the hot spots around the world that are most susceptible to agricultural development. We find up to a one third loss of terrestrial species and abundance in the tropics. Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly at-risk and has only half the protected area coverage of potentially high risk agricultural development areas as Latin America.
The type of land tenure regimes affects the trade-off between production and environmental outcomes
Combining data on biodiversity, land-use change and production across different land-tenure regimes in the Chaco shows that no single land-tenure regime is able to minimize trade-offs between production and environmental outcomes best, emphasizing the need for spatially adapted zoning strategies to limit deforestation in the Chaco.
The global soybean boom drives deforestation in the Chaco
The South American dry Chaco is losing forests at an alarming rate. This new study provides more evidence that while cattle ranching appears to be the dominant proximate cause for deforestation, ultimately the global soybean boom may drive deforestation in the Chaco.
Biogeography field trip to the Polish Carpathians
Here are some impressions of our field trip to the Bieszczady Mountains where students were trained in field data collection.
European Training Network COUPLED will kick off in 2018
The network "Operationalising Telecoupling for Solving Sustainability Challenges for Land Use" (COUPLED) is a joint graduate school of HU Berlin, other European universities and partner organizations from business and civil society that is funded by the EU. The program is to run until 2022 and will train outstanding PhD students in trans- and interdisciplinary concepts and methodologies within the framework of excellent research projects. The focus is on the concept of telecouplings, which helps to explain drivers and outcomes of land use change by investigating the interrelationship between different actors, drivers, and feedback over long distances. The research will be conducted in close cooperation with companies, NGOs, international organizations and administrative bodies in order to better integrate research, innovation and social responsibility.
New paper using Landsat 8 composites to derive large mammal corridors in the Caucasus
In this paper we used the Landsat 8 record to classify land cover for the entire Caucasus ecoregion (70 Mha). Based on the land cover we identified numerous large mammal corridors among protected areas, but also widespread bottlenecks within the corridors that indicate limited functioning. Our study highlights how remote sensing can support connectivity analyses across large areas, one of the key instruments in conservation planning.
Letter published in Science on the importance of the Gran Chaco
Our letter in Science magazine highlights the importance of the large & diverse Gran Chaco, a dry forest ecoregion in urgent need of higher conservation attention.
The Gran Chaco is a hotspot of deforestation and a major carbon emission source
Land-use change is a major driver of climate change, and in the South American Chaco agricultural expansion and intensification have been rampant during the last 30 years. Further, from a carbon perspective the Chaco is of similar importance as other global frontiers, though receives substantially less attention in policy arenas.
Warfare affects land systems at multiple scales
Shocks can affect land systems in major ways. Warfare is a globally frequent shock, sometimes causing severe land-use change. This review suggests, though, that these changes are not unidirectional and much remains to be learned as the number of existing studies is low.
Logging threatens capercaillie in the Carpathians
Capercaillie are Europe’s largest grouse species and an umbrella species for biodiversity conservation. A new study led by Martin Mikolas and just published in Landscape Ecology shows that logging over the last 30 years, especially salvage logging following storm events, has resulted in diminishing capercaillie habitat in the Carpathians and declining connectivity among core habitat areas. Protection of remaining key capercaillie areas and more capercaillie-friendly forestry is urgently needed to halt the decline of this iconic species.
The breakdown of the Soviet Union forges a beef telecoupling between Brazil and Russia
How do institutional shocks affect trade patterns and telecouplings? The breakdown of the Soviet Union provides an interesting example how such shocks can redistribute environmental footprints lastingly and over great distances. Florian Schierhorn and colleagues show in a paper just published in Global Food Security how Russia became the largest importer of Brazilian beef as a result of the collapse of its Russia’s livestock sector in the 1990s, and the emergence of Brazil as the leading global beef exporter in the early 2000s.
Heterogeneous effectiveness of protected areas in the Carpathians
Protected areas are a cornerstone for forest protection, but they are not always effective during times of socioeconomic and institutional crises. A new paper by Van Butsic and co-authors just published in Conservation Biology analysed more than 1300 protected areas in the Carpathians to show that effectiveness varied substantially among countries, time periods, and protection levels. This indicates that the effectiveness of protected areas is transitory over time and space, and suggests that generalizations about the effectiveness of protected areas can be misleading.
Agriculture rivals biomes in predicting global species richness
We find that agricultural land use performs as well as environmental variables in predicting global scale species richness patterns. This is an important finding, given that it is still unclear how important land use really is in driving global rather than local diversity patterns.
Conflicting EU policies may hamper biodiversity conservation without mitigating climate change
In this paper, we reviewed the EU environmental policies and programmes aimed at mitigating climate change and conserving biodiversity, and questioned the common assumption that in addition to the perceived climate benefits increasing forest area will also support biodiversity, thus making afforestation a “win-win scenario”. Indeed, joined climate and biodiversity benefits are strongly context-dependent. For instance, when afforestation occurs on extensively managed, biodiversity-rich semi-natural grasslands, the environmental benefits of afforestation are highly questionable. We found a striking ambivalence between policies and funding schemes addressing grassland conservation on the one hand and those supporting afforestation on the others, and highlighted the risk that the EU may be paying to maintain these grasslands in some areas, while also be paying to convert similar grasslands into forests.
Agricultural intensification trends differed substantially between Europe's East and West since the 1990s.
Patterns of yield and nitrogen application trends for six crop-type groups in the EU between 1990 and 2007 reveals marked spatial differences with high intensity levels particularly in Western and Central Europe. Soil quality, labor productivity, and climate were identified as main determinants for these trends.
Of Wolves, Bisons and Deportation. Wild Bieszczady Mountains
Report and impressions from the Biogeography field trip to the Polish Bieszczady Mountains.
Hotspots of land use change in Europe
How changes in the extent of land uses and the intensity at which these land uses take place relate to each other remains often unclear. A new paper by Tobias Kuemmerle and co-authors, published in Environmental Research Letters, uses a comprehensive dataset of land-use indicators for Europe to highlight the marked spatial differentiation of land-use trends in Europe. Many areas fell into at least one hotspots of land change, and change processes often co-occurred (e.g., .area decline and intensification or area increase and disintensification) highlighting the need for regionalized, context-specific policy-making.
Brown bear habitat connectivity in the Carpathians
Connectivity assessments typically assume that animals move preferable in suitable habitat. A new paper by Elżbieta Ziółkowska, just published in Landscape Ecology, shows for bears in the northern Carpathians, that this assumption can be simplistic. Corridors identified based on habitat models and movement models differed substantially, highlighting the value of movement data when assessing connectivity.
New typology of European agricultural landscapes
Targeting land management, landscape planning, and conservation measures require identifying appropriate spatial units. A new paper by Emma van der Zanden, just published in Urban and Landscape Planning, does so in providing the first topology of European landscapes sensitive to land management, landscape structure, and land cover.
Farmland recultivation patterns in Ukraine
Vast areas of farmland were abandoned in Ukraine after the breakdown of the Soviet Union. Recently, much farmland is taken back into production, thanks to rising global prices and a recovery of Ukraine’s agricultural sector. A new paper by Anatoly Smalichuk highlights that the drivers governing recultivation are mainly economic in nature, as most recultivation happens where agricultural potential is high. This contrasts from abandonment patterns in the 1990s, when also land reform and institutional factors played a role, together suggesting that much land will remain abandoned.
New maps on cropping intensity patterns in Europe
Understanding the intensity of cropping is important for identifying potentials to close yield and harvesting gaps, and thus to lessen pressure on further land conversions. A new paper by Stephan Estel, published in Environmental Research letters, shows new maps of cropping frequency, multi- vs. single cropping, fallow cycles, and actual time a field is under crops on MODIS image time series from 2000 to 2012 for all of Europe.
Environmental trade-off and social constraints of recultivating Soviet farmland
Recultivating abandoned agricultural land is an attractive option for raising agricultural production, but the environmental trade-offs and socio-economic constraint of recultivation remain unclear. A new paper, led by Patrick Meyfroidt and published in Global Environmental Change assesses recultivation potential in the European part of the former Soviet Union. While nearly 50 million hectares (Mha) of cropland lay idle in this region, only 8.5 Mha of them had low environmental trade-offs and low socio-economic constraints, while more than 30 Mha are unlikely to provide important contributions to future crop production, highlighting that cropland reclamation is not a panacea to addressing global food security or reduce pressure on tropical ecosystems.
Fusing optical and radar images improves land-use change mapping, but is rarely done
A review of existing studies combining optical and radar reveals that only a minority of the studies have a concrete rationale on the application of the methods in the context of the land-use science question.
Explaining unexpected European bison dispersal
Reintroduced populations may sometimes not behave as predicted. A new paper, led by Elzbieta Ziolkowska, uses connectivity assessments based on circuit theory to highlight bottlenecks and barriers for European bison dispersal in Eastern Carpathians, and thus why bison are not colonizing apparently suitable habitat. Establishing a large meta-population of bison in the Carpathians will thus require to establish functional dispersal corridors for bison along the Carpathian ridge.
Addressing Climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation in European Forests – FORESTS and CO project launched
European forests store huge amounts of carbon, and are thus important for mitigating climate change. Forest management can increase carbon storage, but it is often unclear how this affects forest biodiversity. Answering this question is at the core of the new EU-funded research project ‘CO-Benefits and COnflicts between CO2 sequestration and biodiversity conservation in European FORESTS’, (FORESTS and CO), carried out by Dr. Francesco Maria Sabatini and Prof. Tobias Kuemmerle with the partnership of the European Forest Institute.
New DFG project started: Understanding links between agriculture and biodiversity in the Chaco
A new project, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG, KU 2458/5-1) and entitled “Trade-offs between agriculture and biodiversity conservation in the South American Chaco” started with a Kickoff meeting of German and Argentine project partners in Argentina in October 2015. The Argentine Chaco is among the most rapidly transforming forest ecoregions worldwide, mainly due to the expansion of export-oriented agriculture and cattle ranching. The widespread conversions of natural grasslands and forests to agricultural lands in the Chaco also exert great pressure on the region’s biodiversity, but how different taxa respond to land use change, which species are loosers and which winners of the recent agricultural boom, and how agriculture and conservation goals could be balanced in the region remains highly unclear.
Kick-Off meeting PASANOA: sustainable land management in Northern Argentina
The new project PASANOA - Pathways to sustainable land management in Northern Argentina - starts with a Kick-Off meeting on 3./4. October 2015 in Mar de Plata, Argentina. The workshop enables the Project-Partners to discuss and organize the tasks and deliverables within the work packages.
Humans matter in food webs
Understanding whether top-down or bottom-up drivers are more important in controlling food webs is a long-standing research question in ecology. Most research to date has focused on assessing this question in natural ecosystems. A new paper published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B and led by Ine Dorresteijn shows that in transformed landscapes, humans have an important top-down effect, influencing species across trophic levels. Given that most ecosystems across the global are influenced by land use, the study highlights the need to explicitly embed humans within trophic cascade theory.
Land use legacies determine logging patterns in the Carpathians
The Carpathians, Europe's largest mountain range and Europe's largest temperate forest ecosystem, are currently undergoing a period of intensive logging. A number of factors have been identified to contribute to high logging rates in the Carpathians , including ownership changes, illegal logging, and rising timber prices. A new study led by Catalina Munteanu and published in Global Environmental Change now shows that past land management is an important factor determining today's logging patterns. Using a unique set of historical maps, the study highlights that logging was much more likely in areas that were historically used for agriculture - areas where today spruce mono-cultures dominate in much of the Carpathians.
Big congratulations to Stephan Estel!
Stephan Estel defended his PhD yesterday with a very nice presentation. Stephan worked on mapping patterns of agricultural land-use intensity across Europe. In the tradition of the institute, Stephan got a very special hat summarizing his time here with us... Click for pictures of the event.
New study of global patterns of agricultural land use-intensity and biodiversity
By 2050 it is estimated that we will need around 50% more food. Even under ambitious future scenarios of reducing food waste, consumption of meat and dairy, and inequality, agricultural production increases will still be necessary (Visconti et al., 2015). Biodiversity is already in trouble, notably due to agricultural expansion into natural areas. Land-use intensification often touted as solution to stop expanding into natural areas and grow more on the same patch. However, in finding a balance between agriculture and wildlife, most research focuses on yields and biodiversity. Our new study published in Diversity and Distributions this week shows that this is an over-simplistic approach. Focusing on yields alone in agricultural intensification misses a big part of the story, and potentially overlooks numerous drivers of biodiversity loss (e.g. irrigation causing salinization of soils, toxic livestock runoff). Our study shows that if we wish to find sustainable ways in which to feed the world, we need to take into account the full spectrum of management practises by which we grow food.
Correlates of vertebrate species richness over Europe across scales
What determines patterns of species richness is a fundamental question in biogeography. A new paper led by Maud Mouchet, just published in PLoS ONE, provides new insights related to this question by assessing avian, amphibian, and mammalian richness patterns in Europe across scales using boosted regression trees. Land cover and evapotranspiration were main correlates of vertebrate species richness over Europe, correlates varied substantially among regions and across scales - with land-use/land-cover becoming more important at finer scales.
Call for applications for 2 PhD positions in our lab starting in the fall (deadline extended!)
We are now accepting applications for two new PhD positions in our lab. Both PhD projects will focus on the South American Chaco - the biggest continuous dry forest in the world, spanning parts of Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay. This area has undergone rapid deforestation and agricultural intensification in the past few decades with drastic outcomes for biodiversity and ecosystem services. Recruiting has started, but the application deadline has been extended until 31 Juli.
European bison habitat in the Caucasus
European bison have been successfully saved from extinction, but their long-term survival requires larger and well-connected herds. A new paper in Biological Conservation, led by Benjamin Bleyhl, shows that the Caucasus mountains is a place where a large bison population could be establish, providing ample summer and winter habitat.
Declining trends in human appropriation of NPP over Europe
A new paper by Simone Gingrich and co-authors in Land Use Policy shows that Human Appropriation of NPP (HANPP) has declined during the 20th century across Europe. Using a comprehensive set of land use datasets from nine countries, the paper also shows that the starkly contrasting institutional and economic paradigms, with communism on the one hand and capitalism on the other, did not influence HANPP trajectories strongly - highlighting the importance of population and technological change as drivers of land management.
Potential for cropland expansion in Kazakhstan lower than appreciated
Much cropland was abandoned in Kazakhstan after the breakdown of the Soviet Union and an important question is if and how these lands could contribute to global food security. A new paper by Roland Kramer in Environmental Research Letters suggests that the potential for further expansion may be lower than appreciated, because much recultivation has already occurred in the last years and the remaining abandoned lands largely is located in areas with low agricultural production potentials.
Forst transitions and carbon budgets in the former Soviet Union
When forest transitions, the shift from net deforestation to net forest increase, happened has important implications for carbon budgets. A new paper in Global Change Biology, led by Tobias Kuemmerle, highlights that forest transitions in European Russia happened later and forest recovery was slower than previously appreciated. Moreover, the intensity of and use already 200 years ago may have been much higher than previously thought. Together, this suggest a high potential for increased carbon sequestration in European Russia.
Mapping agricultural abandonment and recultivation in Europe
Agricultural abandonment is a major land use change in the temperate region but where abandonment happens is often unclear. A new paper in Remote Sensing of Environment, led by Stephan Estel, uses MODIS time series analyses to map managed and fallow agricultural land for all of Europe annually since 2001. This allowed to identify hotspots of continued abandonment, mainly in mountain regions and Eastern Europe, but also to show that recultivation of cropland abandoned after the breakdown of the Soviet Union has become a major land trend in Europe.
Unraveling drivers of scattered tree loss in Germany
Trees outside forests are often overlooked, yet are important for biodiversity and carbon dynamics. A new paper, led by Tobias Plieninger and just published in PLOS One, highlights that orchard meadows in Southern Germany have been disappearing rapidly over the last decades, mainly due to conversion to more profitable land uses and urban areas. The paper also identifies what characterizes persistent orchard meadows - information that could be used to craft more effective policies to preserve these landscape elements.
Forest loss in the Caucasus due to the Olypmic games
Much environmental concern surrounded the Winter Olympics in Sotchi 2014 as skiing slopes and facilities were constructed in one of the largest forest tracts of the Greater Caucasus. A new paper by Genya Bragina, published in Biological Conservation, used a satellite image analyses to find that the Olympics indeed led to sizable forest losses inside former protected areas. Overall though, forest loss in the region since 1990 was lower than in other regions in the former Soviet Union - which is encouraging given that the Caucasus is a biodiversity hotspot.
Girl's Day 2015
On Thursday, 23.April 2015, the Biogeography Department took part in the "Girl's Day". We welcomed a group of Girls to discover what female scientists do in the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at Campus Adlershof.
Happy World Pangolin Day. What are we celebrating?
Laura Kehoe's new blog on the Pangolin featured in Mongabay.
Scenario analysis highlights the importance of small patches to maintain forest connectivity in the Argentine Chaco
Maintaining habitat connectivity at the eco-regional scale is a key goal of land-use and conservation planning, but it remains often unclear how current future connectivity change in the future. A new paper led by María Piquer-Rodríguez, and just published in Landscape Ecology, shows how scenarios of future deforestation can be used to identify those landscape elements that are key to maintaining connectivity. Moreover, the paper shows that the Argentine Forest Law, planned and implement at the state level, needs to be complemented by a eco-regional assessment connectivity assessment and should focus more on forest remnants acting as stepping stones and are thus important to preserve forest connectivity in the Chaco.
Decline of large mammal populations after the breakdown of the Soviet Union
The breakdown of the Soviet Union constitutes one of the most dramatic institutional and socioeconomic shocks of the 20th century. A new paper, led by Eugenia Bragina and just published in Conservation Biology, suggests that large mammal populations in Russia may have been hit hard by the breakdown of the Soviet Union. Most most populations declined during the 1990s, likely a result of overexploitation, while wildlife populations appear to having rebounded after 2000.
Our lab at the IBS conference in Bayreuth
Last week our group participated in the International Biogeography Society 7th Biennial Conference in Bayreuth. We all had a great time there listening to inspiring talks, chatting with interesting people and exploring the Frankonian Beerdiversity. In the following you can find and download our four poster contributions to the conference.
A mix of sparing and sharing is more optimal than either land use strategy
Aligning food production with biodiversity conservation is a great challenge of our time. Much scientific debate has centered on whether land sparing (separating conservation and agriculture) or land sharing (integrating the two) is superior in this regard. A new paper by Van Butsic and Tobias Kuemmerle in Ecological Applications shows that at the landscape scale, a mix of both strategies outperforms both sharing and sparing in most cases. The paper also introduces an modelling framework to derive more optimal solutions than choosing between the black and white alternatives of sharing vs. sparing.
Harnessing the biodiversity value of Central and Eastern European farmland
Farmland biodiversity depends on low-intensity farming practices, and Eastern Europe still harbors widespread traditional landscapes rich in farmland biodiversity. A large group of authors from Europe's East and West now highlights that farmland biodiversity in Eastern Europe is lost, and adequate conservation measures, adjusted to the local conditions in Eastern Europe, are needed to safeguard biodiversity heritage there.
Warfare triggered land use change in the Caucasus
Armed conflict are en extreme form of an institutional and socioeconomic and shock, but how conflict affects land use change trajectories remains poorly understood. Studying the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus region, a new paper in Regional Environmental Change, first-authored by Matthias Baumann, highlights land use changes at the conflicts site and away from it - potentially shifting land systems into new states.
Does China's logging ban weaken the conservation function of sacred forest?
Understanding the effectiveness of different conservation approaches is important to guide conservation planning and policy making. A new paper by Jodi Brandt, just published in Biological Conservation, explored how three conservation policies, protected areas, a logging ban, and traditional sacred areas, affected old-growth forest protection in Yunnan in China's southwest. While protected areas and the logging ban resulted in positive forest conservation outcomes, old-growth forests logging inside sacred areas accelerated following the logging ban, suggesting that local institutions may have been weakened by national policies.
New project on land-use change and biodiversity in Kazakhstan
A new 3-year-project in Kazakhstan will be funded by the Volkswagen Foundation entitled ‘Balancing trade-offs between agriculture and biodiversity in the steppes of Kazakhstan (BALTRAK)’. The aim of the project is to quantify spatio-temporal trends in fire and land use in Kazakhstan, to understand the links between land use, fire, and biodiversity, and finally, to explore potentials for increasing agricultural production.
Germany's land systems changed similarly - despite East-West separation
Socieal-economic and institutional shocks, such as revolutions, warfare or economic crisis can be powerful drivers of environmental change. A new study led by Maria Niedertscheider and just published in Global Environmental Change suggests that the industrialization of agriculture over the last 130 years was relatively unaffected by the numerous shock events during that time - including two world wars, the German separation and reunification, and the EU accession of Germany. The case of Germany illustrate that technological innovation, increasing resource efficiency, structural change, and demographic transformations may be more powerful drivers of land system change that institutional factors.
Field trip to the Carpathian Mountains - Bieszczady in May 2014
In the summer term, the Biogeography Lab and the Geomatics Lab as well as the Jagielonian University Krakow organized a joined student field trip to the Bieszczady Mountains in Southeastern Poland. Students carried out field work on measuring forest structure and biomass, as well as learned about a range of field methods to collect ecological data - from setting up camera traps to catching arthropods to conducting herpetile searches. The program was completed by visits of guest researchers talking about their work on wildlife ecology and conservation in the area.
Mapping land systems in Ukraine
Mapping spatial patterns in agricultural management intensity is important to understanding the environmental outcomes of land use. A new study by Jan Stefanski, just published in Remote Sensing, highlights a new approach that combines optical and radar data to map farmland management regimes - from subsistence gardening to intensified agriculture - in Western Ukraine.
Review on finite land resources and competition
The competition for land is rising due to surging rates of consumption of land-based products as well as the emergence of new, globally important land uses such as the conservation of land as well as the expansion of built-up areas. A new publication led by Helmut Haberl discusses emerging issues related to land competition, including the effect of increased demand for non-provisioning ecosystem services (biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration), urbanization, bioenergy, and teleconnections. This publication is part of a book arising as from a Strüngmann workshop on “Rethinking Global Land Use in an Urban Era”.
Moving beyond land cover change in climate change assessments
Are changes in land management, such as changes in forestry or agricultural intensity, important drivers of regional and global climate change? A new paper in Nature Climate Change, led by Sebastiaan Luyssaert, suggests that both conversions among broad land use classes and changes in land management within these classes should be considered when assessing the climate impact of land use change. Using flux tower measurements and remote sensing analyses of pairs of sites with and without conversions or management showed that both types of land use changes results in significant changes in temperature and albedo.
Modelling avian biodiversity using unclassified satellite imagery
Satellite images can provide important information on species’ habitats, yet most habitat studies rely on image classifications that do not capture the variability within broad land cover classes well, and are challenging to derive for areas where sparse vegetation classes dominate. A new paper by Véronique St-Louis, published as a part of a special issue by the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B on Satellite remote sensing for biodiversity research and conservation applications, shows how indices derived from unclassified imagery can help to describe bird habitat in semi-arid environments.
Paper published on drivers of forest harvesting intensity patterns in Europe
Forests provide humankind with essential raw materials and the demand for these materials is increasing. Meeting this demand will have to rely on intensifying forest management in existing production forests since expanding forestry is environmentally costly. Our current understanding of what determines forest management intensity is weak, which makes it difficult to assess the environmental and social trade-offs of intensification. A new paper just published in Forest Ecology & Management mapped the spatial patterns of forest harvesting intensity in Europe, identified its most important determinants along with their relative importance, and provides concrete starting points for developing measures targeted at increasing regional wood supply from forests or lowering harvest pressure in regions where forests are heavily used.
Biogeography class explores principles of island-biogeography
In one of their weekly sessions students of the Biogeography class played a game about island-biogeography throwing beermats from different distances on carpet-islands in different sizes. Find out more about the game and see some pictures...
Mapping threats to reindeer habitat in Russia
Migratory species often have large ranges, but some parts of their range are particularly critical. For Reindeer herds, calving grounds are crucial habitat, yet for many Russian reindeer herds calving grounds are neither well known nor protected. A new paper just published in Diversity and Distributions mapped, for the first time, the distribution of tundra reindeer calving ground habitat across Russia, and how oil and gas development as well as climate change may affect these habitats in the future.
Paper on agricultural land use change in the Carpathians published
How agricultural land use changes is poorly understood in many world regions. A new paper by Patrick Griffiths that was just published in Environmental Research Letters used the composite images created from the Landsat archives to map cropland/grassland conversions, cropland abandonment, and recultivation for the entire Carpathians.
New paper on farmland abandonment and carbon sequestration in Eastern Europe
the breakdown of the Soviet union has triggered what has been called the most drastic episode of land use change - with many millions of hectares of farmland being abandoned. An important question in this context is how much carbon has been sequestered on abandoned farmland. A new paper led by Florian Schierhorn that was just published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles answers this question by disaggregating fine-scale cropland statistics to generate an area-wide abandonment map for European Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, and the LPJmL global vegetation model to calculate how much carbon has been sequestered since abandonment on these lands.
TV documentary on links between German wood demand and forest use in Eastern Europe
The German TV station NDR recently produced a documentary focusing on Germany's rapidly increasing fuel wood demand and the sources fuel wood. As Eastern Europe increasingly becomes an important exporter of wood, the documentary also shows some of the results from our satellite-based mapping of forest cover changes in the Carpathians and it features interviews with members from the Biogeography and Geomatics Labs of the Geography Department. the show was aired on Dec 2, 2013 and can be seen on the webpage of the station
New EU FP-7 project HERCULES started
The new project 'Sustainable futures for Europe’s HERitage in CULtural landscapES (HERCULES): Tools for understanding, managing, and protecting landscape functions and values' was just kicked off in Brussels. HERCULES seeks to better understand the characteristics, spatial patterns, and dynamics in Europe's cultural landscapes in order to develop tools to help protect, manage, and plan for sustainable landscapes.HERCULES is funded by the European Commission (FP7).
New map of global land system archetypes
Land use is a major driver of global environmental change and many of the grand sustainbility challenges humanity faces in the 21st century. Unfortunately, our understanding of the global patterns of land use is limited, mainly because global data on land management intensity are scarce. A recently published in the journal Global Environmental Change combined a range of land use, environmental, and socio-economic datasets to provide a global map of land systems. This freely available map will be useful for assessing the environmental and social outcomes of changing land use. This study emerged from a collaboration between Humboldt-University Berlin and the Environmental Resaerch Centre (UFZ) in Leipzig and was jointly supported by the German BMBF and the Einstein Foundation Berlin.
New study in Nature Climate Change reveals potential bias in carbon flux estimates
A new study by Karlheinz Erb and coauthors suggests a substantial fraction of the terrestrial carbon sink, past and present, may be incorrectly attributed to environmental change rather than changes in forest management.
First pictures from our camera traps!
We recently purchased 40 camera traps to monitor wildlife activity. Check out some fascinating pictures from testing these cameras in Central Romania and Southern Sweden!
Research frontiers for better understanding trade-offs between agricultural production and biodiversity conservation
How to balance agricultural production and biodiversity conservation has emerged as a central question in Land Use Science and Conservation Biology. A new paper by Ricardo Grau and co-authors, recently published in Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, identifies research frontiers in the analysis of trade-offs between agriculture and conservation. The paper highlights that assessments of alternative land use strategies, such as land sparing and land sharing, could benefit from an improved consideration of environmental heterogeneity (in biodiversity patters and agricultural productivity), teleconnections, and the socio-economic constrants of particular land use strategies.
Improving understanding of changes in land use intensity
Two new papers recently published in the journal Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability address existing knowledge gaps surrounding land use intensity. In the first study, Erb and co-authors review the disciplinary context of research on land use intensity, discuss conceptualizations of indicators to measure land use intensity, and propose a new, systemic framework for addressing land use intensity. The second study by Kuemmerle and co-authors review approaches to map land use intensity globally, summarize existing quantitative, spatially-explicit metrics, and outline challenges and concrete steps forward to better characterize land use intensity and changes therein at the global scale. Both papers emerge from a Global Land Project (GLP) synthesis effort and research carried out within the EU FP7 Integrated Research Project VOLANTE.
New study highlights barriers to interdisciplinary research
Environmental problems are complex and require expertise from multiple disciplines, but environmental research that integrates natural and social science can be challenging. A new study in BioScience carried out by the 2009 class of fellows of the Coupled Human and Natural Systems Network (CHANS-Net) highlights both the benefits of and barriers to successful interdisciplinary resaerch. A comprehensive survey among environmental scientists showed that respondents identified many advantages and rewards of interdisciplinary research, but also revealed substantial barriers at the institutional level. The survey furthermore suggests that interdisciplinary training should begin as early as possible in scientists' careers.
Identifying reintroduction sites for European bison in Germany
The Biogeography and Conservation Biology Lab recently started a new project together with researchers fromPoland and WWF Germany to identify potential reintroduction sites for European bison in Germany.
Future land use effects on habitat connectivity
Maintaining habitat connectivity is a major challenge for conservation planners. Using an example from Southern Spain, a new paper by Maria Piquer-Rodriguez highlights how conservation planning for connectivity can be improved by considering future scenarios and and by identifying those landscape connectors that are at highest risk of being lost.
Biogeography class trip to the Museum für Naturkunde
After the final exam of the semester the Biogeography class had the opportunity to learn about research and conservation in action with a back-stage tour of the Museum für Naturkunde. Students had the chance to see the some of the 30 million objects in the Museum’s collection along with learning about behind the scenes cataloging and research techniques including amphibian studies in Western Africa and microscopic digitalization of specimens.
