Are you interested in doing your thesis with us?
We welcome contacts by MSc and BSc students looking for our supervision during their final thesis projects. If you are interested in working with us, please first have read our Guidelines for Bachelor’s and Master’s theses. This document describes our expectations, and offers recommendations to help you identify a research topic aligned with our expertise.
To help you find a research topic, below you will find past theses titles and a list of our key areas of research.
M.Sc. Nature Conservation & Landscape Ecology
- Influence of local weather, land use and crop type on the functional diversity and traits of butterflies in the Netherlands
- Promotion of characteristic plant species through turf-stripping measures in slope spring fens – An effectiveness analysis in the Oberberg District
- The Ecological Potential of a Flood Disaster: Opportunities and Failures after the 2021 Heavy Rainfall Event in the Ahr Valley
- Influence of local weather, land use and crop type on the functional diversity and traits of butterflies in the Netherlands
Key areas of research
Species Distribution Modeling (SDM)
We offer expertise in the development of SDMs, and in their use for nature conservation. Theses may use open-access data, or profit from ongoing monitoring efforts carried by our lab, to, for instance:
- Mapping distributions of plants, birds, and mammals
- Integration of local and regional/global biodiversity data to improve SDMs
- Use of SDMs in evaluating the effectiveness of nature conservations
Contact: Stephanie Roilo
Understanding environmental change
You will learn how to integrate heterogeneous data sources (e.g., species observations, remote sensing), across spatio-temporal scales (local-global, daily-decadal) to investigate, for instance:
- Interactions between biodiversity and environmental change (e.g., due to agriculture)
- Impacts of biodiversity change on human well being (e.g., related to food security)
- Impacts of biased in data (e.g., gaps, quality issues) on change analyses
Contact: Ruben Remelgado
Sustainable agriculture
Use of Unmaned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and/or acoustic sensors (to monitor, e.g., individual birds) as part of ongoing monitoring activities to:
- Advance the quality and precision of biodiversity monitoring
- Explore synergies between sensors and methods used to monitor biodiversity and agriculture
- Model temporal dynamics of crop production, their status, and their link with biodiversity
Contact: Clara Bazzo
