About

various M.Sc. topics for your thesis are possible and can be discussed in person. Please look also through past M.Sc. thesis in the next tab to get a better idea.

Biodiversity analysis and conservation decision relies on adequate and meaningful data that are available on a long-term and global basis.  Such environmental information need adequate spatial and temporal resolution and remote sensing data does provide a wide range of potentially suitable data sets. Various approaches concerning remote sensing data use for biodiversity and conservation exist to improve the application and integration. This is especially important since the use of remote sensing has increased widely over the past decades, and therefore interdisciplinary approaches foster the understanding of needed parameters for biodiversity monitoring, which provide guidance to observation systems as to what and how to measure key aspects of biodiversity. Multi-scale, multi-sensor and multi-temporal remote sensing data analysis do provide needed and crucial information for ecological analysis, especially within conservation applications, species distribution analysis or animal movement analysis. A variety of MSc topics is available aiming to improve remote sensing usage in ecology conservation, as well as its application. It is aimed at, that all MSc are in close collaboration with ecology or conservation organizations to support a truly interdisciplinary thesis. Martin Wegmann is dedicated to use his scientific network to organizations such as SCBI, ZSL, IUCN, UNEP-WCMC, WWF etc. for embedding EAGLE MSc thesis.

For more details, please see the tab of past MSc topics. Moreover, please visit www.remote-sensing-biodiversity.org for updates on data, events and publications related to remote sensing data analysis in ecology and conservation. Additionally, AniMove.org and EcoSens.org offer further details on potential MSc topics and trainings.

list of recent graduates and their topics, mainly done in collaboration with colleagues listed under the “network” tab:

•  Anna-Lena Hendel
  “Effects of rain-on-snow and ground ice on seasonal NDVI in high Arctic Svalbard”
• Anne Selbmann
  “Spatial pattern of wildfire severity and vegetation  in the Yukon Delta, Alaska”
• Jakob Schwalb-Willmann
  “A deep learning movement prediction model using environmental data to identify movement anomalies”
• Tejas Bhagwat
  “Using animal movement patterns to derive new remote sensing landcover maps for conservation”
• Markus Martini
  “Automated tree detection: applications for object-based image analysis in arid systems”
• Dorothee Stiller
  “Analysing spatio-temporal patterns of coastal aquaculture based on three decades of satellite data”
• Sophie Reinermann
  “Extreme Events in Europe between 2000 and 2017: Analysis of Vegetation Dynamics based on Earth Observation Time Series”
• Susanne Karg
  “Burn Scar Detection using Polarimetric ALOS-2 time-series data”
• Frank Weiser
  “Assessing the forest response along treelines to an Epirrita automnata outbreak in Abisko, using a combination of fieldwork and remote sensing”
• Henrike Schulte to Bühne
  “Quantifying landcover change using remote sensing data in a transboundary protected area“
• Matthias Biber:
  “Can animal movement and remote sensing data help to improve conservation efforts?”
• Joseph Premier
  “The Lynx Effect: Behaviour of Roe Deer in the Presence of Lynx in a European Forest Ecosystem”
• Andrea Hess:
  “Deforestation in Myanmar – what can we say about causes?”
• Anna Stephanie:
  “Impact of remote sensing characteristics for biodiversity monitoring”
• Yrneh Ulloah:
  “Object-oriented classification of historical maps for ecosystem services”
• Asja Bernd:
  “Mind the Gap: A Global Analysis of Grassland Fragmentation using MODIS Land Cover Data”
• Alexandra Bell:
  “Moving forward – application of behaviour change point analysis and species distribution models in conservation.”
• Christian Wohlfart:
  “Mapping tropical dry forest in South East Asia using a continuous cover approach.”
• Andrea Früh:
  “Historic changes in regional ecosystem service demand.”
• Wanda Graf:
  “Suitability of Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data and texture measures of aerial images to model the species distribution of Glaucidium passerinum (Pygmy Owl) in Vercors, French Alps”
• Anne Simang:
  “Influence of habitat and governance for landscape level conservation on Asian elephants.”
• Eva-Marie Obermaier:
  “Impact of environmental factors on geographical schistosomiasis distribution in the Man region of Ivory Coast.”
• Vadym Sokol:
  “Interaction between white stork migration patterns and urban environment in Germany.”
• Judith Reise:
  “Impact of model algorithm selection and remote sensing data selection on the analysis of species-habitat associations.”
• Katrin Ziewers:
  “Declining migratory avian species in the UK: a consequence of habitat quality alteration in western Africa”
• Antonia Ortmann:
  “Estimating land cover changes and current carbon stock in Tanzania in the context of REDD+”
• Moses Duguru:
  “Climate patterns in West-Central Africa”
• Tobias Sieg:
  “The potential of interferometric and polarimetric SAR data to characterize urban areas at the example of Mumbai and Manila”
• Sarah Malec:
  “Assessment of Soil degradation in Costa Rica using reflectance hyperspectral and simulated EnMAP imagery”
• Daniela Braun:
  “Estimating the current and future human impact in Tanzania for wildlife corridor management.”
• Benjamin Leutner:
  “Modeling biodiversity patterns in a temperate montane forest by means of hyperspectral and LiDAR remote sensing”
• Michael Ewald:
  “Assessing the influence of vegetation structure on roe deer habitat selection using LiDAR”
• Carlos Dambroz:
  “Analysing forest fragmentation characeristics among continuous vegetation gradients in South America”
• Daniel Kachelriess:
  “Analysis of the effectivity of Marine Protected Areas – a case study using remote sensing for the Chagos Archipelago.”
• Christiane Plum:
  “The underuse of remote sensing in ecology and conservation: quantifying technical and cultural constrains”.
• Daniela Kretz:
  “Frost in a warmer world: spatial-temporal investigation of the recovery of temperate forests after a late spring frost.”
• Philipp Gnoyke:
  “Large land acquisitions in East Africa”
• Tim Besser:
  “Sprawling crisis? Urbanization from the perspective of protected areas near Kolkata, India”
• Hannes Müller:
  “Modelling of forest structure with remote sensing data.”
• Mary Antonette Beroya-Eitner:
  “Flood vulnerability index for Delta socio-ecological systems: application to the Mekong river detla, Vietnam.”
• Seyed Sadroddin Alavi Panah:
  “Relationship between land surface temperature and the ratio of urban areas and urban parks”
• Sophia Wisboeck:
  “Explaining variation in home range size of red deer (cervus elaphus) in the Bavarian Forest National Park using LiDAR derived metrics on forest structure and fractional cover”

• Kamran Safi, MPI-O, Computational Ecology
• Jörg Müller, University Würzburg, Nationalpark Bavarian Forest, Conservation
• Thomas Müller, Chloe Bracis, BIK-F, Computational Ecology
• Björn Reineking, IRSTEA, Computational Ecology
• Justin Calabrese, Smithsonian, Computational Ecology
• Nathalie Pettorelli, ZSL, Conservation
• Duccio Rocchini, FMACH
• Thomas Köllner, Uni Bayreuth, Ecosystem Services
• Gregoire Dubois, Ilaria Palumbo, Zoltan Szantoi, EU-JRC
• Andrew Skidmore, ITC
• Inge Jonckheere, UN-FAO
• Peter Leimgruber, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute
• Sarah Asam, Ruth Sonnenschein, EURAC
• Allison Leidner, Woody Turner, Gary Geller, NASA, GEO
• Tobias Kümmerle, HU
• Stefan Ziegler, WWF
• Graeme Buchanan, RSPB
• Brian O’Connor, Mike Harfoot, UNEP-WCMC
• and more

• AniMove: combining animal movement analysis and remote sensing data for conservation and ecology (www.animove.org)
• EcoSens: applying remote sensing in ecology and conservation science (www.ecosens.org)

all trainings focus on applied topics and combine course work and hands-on project work. Only open-source software is used such as R, QGIS or GRASS. Most topics are covered in the book “Remote Sensing and GIS for Ecologists – Using Open Source software” (Wegmann, Leutner, Dech, 2016)