News
Maximising carbon stock and biodiversity in European temperate forests: can we fill two needs with one deed?
Combining satellite data and agricultural statistics to map grassland management intensity in Europe
Assessing niche overlap between domestic and threatened wild sheep to identify conservation priority areas
Mapping the timing of cropland abandonment and recultivation in northern Kazakhstan using annual Landsat time series
Mapping agricultural land abandonment from spatial and temporal segmentation of Landsat time series
From tropical shelters to temperate defaunation: The relationship between agricultural transition stage and the distribution of threatened mammals
Drivers of agricultural land-use change in the Argentine Pampas and Chaco regions
Mapping extinction debt highlights conservation opportunities for birds and mammals in the South American Chaco
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.
Models meet data: Challenges and opportunities in implementing land management in Earth system models
A large-area, spatially continuous assessment of land cover map error and its impact on downstream analyses
Potential European bison habitat in Germany
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.