We welcome contacts by MSc and BSc students looking for our supervision during their final thesis projects. If you consider reaching out to us, please read our Guidelines for Bachelor’s and Master’s theses at the Professorship of Agro-Ecological Modeling⁵, where we describe expectations, and recommendations to identify a thesis topic fitting to us.

Current research areas:

• Species Distribution Modelling (SDM). This includes primarily, but not exclusively, SDMs on plants, birds, and mammals. We offer expertise in the development of such models, and in their use for nature conservation. The development of SDMs may include open-access data, but may also be supported by data collection efforts carried out in the scope of lab activities and projects (Contact: Stephanie Roilo).

• Farmland bird monitoring. We conduct field experiments in the research farms of the University of Bonn, primarily in the Campus Wiesengut. During these experiments, we deploy audio recorders, aiming at the detection and distinction of bird species with the support for AI-based models and High Performance Computing. Recorders may be  mobilized for specific thesis projects. Students interested in this topic should have bird identification skills (Contact: Ryo Ogawa).

• Monitoring, modeling, and understanding environmental change. Combining various data sources (e.g., species observations, remote sensing), collected at different spatial and temporal scales (from local to global, and from daily to decadal), we are able not only to detect environmental change, but also understand their causal drivers. Theses on this topic may engage directly with biodiversity- and human-related challenges (e.g., food and water security), or with the difficulties of such assessments (e.g., data biases). Those interested in this topic should have good programming skills (preferably R and/or Python), and some experience with land system change (contact: Ruben Remelgado).

You will learn how to build and interpret ecological models for natural resource science and management. This will include an introduction to linear models, generalized linear models, generalized additive models, and mixed-effects models, as well as their use and application in R.

Level: Masters

Study program(s): Nature Conservation and Landscape Ecology⁶, Crop Science⁷, Animal Science⁸, Agricultural Sciences and Resource Management in the Tropics and Subtropics⁹

Teacher: Dr. Ryo Ogawa¹⁰

You will learn the basic principles of conservation biology, with a special focus on spatially-explicit applications in the management of natural resources. The course combines theory, debates on recent scientific papers, and practical sessions with spatial modelling exercises in R.

Level: Masters

Study program(s): Nature Conservation and Landscape Ecology⁶, Crop Science⁷, Animal Science⁸, Agricultural Sciences and Resource Management in the Tropics and Subtropics⁹

Teacher: Dr. Stephanie Roilo¹¹