Research interests

Understanding and addressing anthropogenic pressures on biodiversity and ecosystem services, especially through habitat loss, fragmentation, land-use- and climatic changes. Agriculture is a key driver of these losses, and hence a core topic in my work.

Specifically, agricultural production, expansion and intensification exert pressures on our society, economy and environment - and agricultural policies are, accordingly, central to addressing these pressures. Interdisciplinary research in helps delving onto how the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) affects both nature and people. 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.

Butterfly monitoring and citizen science: long-term monitoring, targeted fieldwork on rare species, and biodiversity surveys help determining the status and trends in biodiversity, but are also great means to activate the public and animate conservation action. As a butterfly expert, I participated in founding the Israeli Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (BMS-IL) in 2009, and since 2020, I'm (co-)leading the German project VielFalterGarten and participating in the EU project UNP+. In both projects, as well as in Agroecology-TRANSECT, we try to expand butterfly monitoring in urban and rural areas, in order to close knowledge gaps and empower citizens to engage in evidence-based decision-making.

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People and Projects

Elizabeth Finch (Post-doc, project Agroecology-TRANSECT)

Linn Schaan (PhD student, project Agroecology-TRANSECT)

Daniel Vedder (PhD student, CAP4GI)

Lea Kolb (PhD student, CAP4GI)

Marco Matthies (technician, CAP4GI)

Maria Moosdorf (project assistant, iCAP-BES / Agroecology-TRANSECT)

Karla Bogs (assistant, Agroecology-TRANSECT)

Alumni: 

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

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)

Lea Kahoun (M.Sc. student, CAP4GI)

Judith Rakowski (assistant, projects CAP4GI and the Birds@Farmlands project)

Christian Nappert (technician, project VielFalterGarten)

Carla Cerda (assistant, project iCAP-BES)

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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)