Take a look at the Master Theses

Explore our Master Theses to see the diverse research conducted by students in our group. Gain insights into various topics and find inspiration for your own academic pursuits.

Ongoing

• Rebecca Roch - Deforestation, hunting accessibility, and their combined impacts on armadillo communities in Bolivia’s Chiquitano Dry Forests
• Ruben Butzer - Abandonment and fires
• Syed Rahman - Large-scale mapping of contemporary shrimp farm extent in Bangladesh
• Francesco Bini - Camtraps and mammals Chiquitania
• Alexandra Weber - Home range sizes European bison
• Laura Gonzalez - Comparing camera traps and sound recorders as data sources for assessing bird occupancy in the Dry Chaco
• Melina Radecke - Quantifying Biosphere Integrity and Predicting Biodiversity Intactness: A Dual Approach Using Threshold Detection and Random Forest Modeling of model-based metrics HANPPHoL and EcoRisk
• Sara Wolff - Mapping Long-Term Fractional Woody Cover Dynamics in Silvopastoral Systems of the Gran Chaco and Chiquitania Using Landsat Time Series
• Anton Schulte-Fischedick - Tracking resilience change in tropical dry forests and exploring their potential drivers

Completed

2025

• Karoline Gerbatsch - The Distribution of Grey Wolves in the Caucasus Ecoregion and their potential Competition to Golden Jackals
• Justus Mennerich - Uncovering the effects of frontier dynamics on mammals in the tropical dry forests of South America

2024

• Tim Westermann - European bison population modelling
• Niklas Brachmann - Understanding social-ecological (dis-)similarity across the world’s tropical dry forests
• Rebecca Cameron - Using Lipid biomarkers to trace organic matter sources from catchments with differing land use extents in the Colombian Andes
• Kristina Gackstetter - Understanding conservation conflicts between herding communities and large carnivores in a shared landscape in Kyrgyzstan
• Antonia Neumaier - The carbon gap in Chacoan forests and outcomes for forest structure and productivity
• Philip Liehr - Detection of silage bags in the Gran Chaco using deep learning and remote sensing
• Juliana Eggers - Forage-Safety Trade-Offs in the Face of Forest Disturbances: Insights from Red Deer Habitat Selection
• Lisa Trimborn - Projecting boreal forest disturbances under climate change with individual based modelling
• Natalja Mai - Complementary use of surrounding flower-rich leys by flower-visiting insects in semi-natural grasslands revealed by remote sensing
• Diego Nicolás Rojas-Vargas - Distribution of COVID-19 infections in dynamic land-use change areas in the Argentinian Gran Chaco
• Josefa Vergara - Co-occurrence of red squirrels and meso-carnivores in private gardens in Berlin, Germany
• Meike Wunder - Mapping the suitable habitat for brown bears (Ursus arctos) in the Caucasus ecoregion since 1987
• Janika Hämmerle - Andean Agrobiodiversity in Traditional Peasant Markets: Mapping corridors of food security on the Peruvian Andes

2023

• Anna Wenzel - Effectiveness of Ecosystem Restoration Concessions and Protected Areas in Avoiding Forest Fires in Indonesia from 2017 to 2021
• Julia Bartsch - Long-term fire reconstruction in Chiquitano tropical dry forest
• Kyra Damp - Analyzing the impact of mega herbivory on woody cover: A natural cross-sectional experiment in Eastern Africa
• Gideon Hussels - Protecting an ancient forest - logging and forest conservation in the Bialowieza Forest in Poland and Belarus

2022

• Isabel Carpenter - The impact of global demand for Soy/Cattle on biodiversity in the Gran Chaco
• Rubén Chavéz - Shifting conservation priorities due to rampant deofrestation in the Gran Chaco
• Suchana Dahal - Mapping trends in livestock grazing pressure in the mountains of Central Asia; combining satellite imagery and field data
• Monique Fahrenberg - Hydroclimatic conditions during extreme events associated with negative gross primary production
• Nikola Halaski - Connectivity of Eurasian lynx habitat in Central Europe
• Lars Holschuh - Taxing EU’s agricultural commodity imports to incentivise tropical and subtropical forest restoration
• Katrin Kirchner - Assessing niche overlap between livestock and mountain ungulates in eastern Tajikistan and northern Kyrgyzstan
• Vera Krause - Socioeconomic traces of land use intensification in Uruguay: Census meet remote sensing data
• Yutong Liang - Identifying priority areas and safe corridors for the conservation of Persian leopards (Panthera pardus saxicolor) in the Caucasus
• Linda Siegert - Deciphering environmental changes during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene using vegetational sedimentary ancient DNA of lake Rauchuagytgyn in Chutotka, Russia
• Karla Vergara - Dynamics of deforestation frontiers in the Peruvian Amazon

2021

• Michaela Daberger - Systematic prioritization of livestock grazing rights buyout in the last viable population of Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus) in Iran
• Marina Frietsch - Exploring the Social-ecological Effectiveness of Protected Areas – A Case Study from North Luangwa, Zambia
• Pauline Holz - Identification of priority conservation areas for the Persian leopard (Panthera pardus saxicolor) and prey species in the Lesser Caucasus
• Marie Pratzer - Exploring intensification spillovers: Understanding the relationship of agricultural intensification and deforestation in the world’s tropical dry forests
• Keri Tietge - Patterns of grassland management intensity and their relation with biodiversity in Southern Sweden
• Sophia Zielosko - Reindeer, Climate and Vegetation: Development of Empetrum nigrum Biomass on Reindeer Summer Pastures in Finnmark, Norway

2020

• Judith Rakowski - Exploring diversity and inclusion among protected area staff members in Armenia with a mixed methods approach
• Silja Zimmermann - Investigating factors influencing habitat selection of Arctic marine mammals to understand important future habitats under climate change

2019

• Hendrik Bluhm - Mapping habitat suitability and landscape connectivity for moose (Alces alces) in Central Europe
• Maria-Theres Dieckmann - The biogegraphic footprint of plastic litter in the marine environment
• Ari Kivelä - Natural grassland change in the Dry Chaco since the 1960s
• Florian Pötzschner - Carbon corridors between key biodiversity areas in the Dry Chaco
• Simon Thomsen - Exploring differences in forest disturbances and land management practices in the Ecuadorian Amazon using Landsat time series and propensity score matching
• Moritz Wenzler -

2017

• Lena Krupp - Land use change and forest fragmentation in the Argentinian Chaco
• Simone Markoff - A functional connectivity approach to identify conservation areas in a changing landscape. A case study of the Eastern Andes in Colombia

2016

• Isabel Knabe - Systematic conservation planning for increasing the protection of amphibians in West Africa
• Joe MacPherson - Potential terrestrial habitat loss due to future reservoir impoundment from hydropower dams*

2015

• Milenka Hampel - Using simulations from dense Landsat time series for crop yield estimations - a case study in Brandenburg, Germany
• Verena Fehlenberg - Understanding proximate causes of deforestation in the Gran Chaco - soybean production vs. cattle ranching
• Christoph Israel - Mapping land use change in the Paraguayan Chaco
• Annika Niepoth - Remote sensing based measures of tree diversity in the Southern Ecuadorian Andes
• Alex Rowell - How has the restitution process affected the conservation value of Romania’s forests?*
• Max Schneider - Boosting Methods for Statistical Classication of Spatial Geographic Phenomena*

2014

• Benjamin Bleyhl - Mapping European bison habitat in the Caucasus
• Stephan Gollombeck - Determinants and spatial patterns of cropland fallow events in Central Europe
• Oreas Kotschi - The changing global soybean network: relations between soybean consumption and its land use footprint
• Martin Mantel - Target areas for the introduction of agroforestry systems in Upper Lusatia*

2013

• Myron Thylmann - Global simulations of high and low intensity agriculture: land management types in a global biogeochemical computer model (LPJmL)*

* = co-supervision

Name information on this webpage is given with the consent of thesis authors. Photos on the individual webpages are courtesy of the authors, if not stated otherwise.