Research interests

Understanding and addressing anthropogenic pressures on biodiversity, especially through habitat loss, fragmentation, land-use- and climatic changes. I am particularly interested in how animal movement and dispersal interact with species’ demography to determine population viability, range-shift dynamics, and community structures in fragmented landscapes.

Patterns and trends in biodiversity: long-term monitoring, targeted fieldwork on rare species, and biodiversity surveys help determining the status and trends in biodiversity. With particular interest in butterflies, I am one of the founders of the Israeli Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (BMS-IL) established 2009, and nowadays serving as a scientific supervisor and consultant to the programme.

Agriculture and agricultural policy and their effects on nature and humans: Agricultural production, expansion and intensification exert pressures on our society, economy and environment. To address these pressures I am engaged in interdisciplinary research onto how the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) affects both nature and humans. I am particularly interested in how the CAP affects Socio-Ecological Systems in terms of the interactions between farm structure and economy, biodiversity and ecosystem services, and consequently also rural vitality and farmers’ wellbeing.

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Projects and Supervision

Julia Rouet-Leduc (PhD student, with Alfons van der Plas, project GrazeLIFE)

Ariane Chamoin (PhD student, with Etienne Maclouf & Aletta Bonn)

Andrea Büermann (PhD student, with Aletta Bonn, project VielFalterGarten)

Christian Nappert (technician, project VielFalterGarten)

Carla Cerda (assistant, project iCAP-BES)

Judith Rakowski (assistant, project CAP4GI)

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Alumni: Dr. Orr Comay (former post-doc, Israeli Butterfly Monitoring Scheme)

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CAP Fitness Check and Call for action:

Marc 2020: >3600 Scientists call for action for the EU Common Agricultural Policy to address sustainability challenges

Fitness Check of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)