Ph.D.-Students of the Institute of Landscape Systems Analysis and the Institute of Socio-Economics here at ZALF presented their work in front of their colleagues and supervisors as part of a Ph.D.-Colloquium on January 18th, 2017. Each presenter was given a 20 min time frame for their presentation and another 20 min in which open debate took place. The broad thematic scope of the two contributing ZALF-institutes was reflected in the selection of presented topics.
Anna Hampf (LSA) introduced the listeners to a citizen science project taking place in Brazil, in which plant diseases can be detected using a smartphone-app. Aiming for improved food and nutritional security in Tanzania, Africa, Michelle Bonatti (SO) talked about her development of an analytical framework as well as educational tools. Evelyn Wallor (LSA) described how she is connecting crop models with highly resolved sensor observations, to improve site-specific fertilization while Ulrike Knuth (SO) presented her Ph.D.-Thesis “Agricultural advisory services and Farm Management Systems to support Cross Compliance”. Last but not least, Linus Früh (LSE/LSA) rounded off the colloquium with his presentation “Modeling the occurrence of Aedes japonicus japonicus with climate data: comparing and interpreting outputs of machine learning methods”.
The open debates following the presentations have shown that there is a link between socio economics and landscape modeling that should be investigated in the future. Some socio economic investigations have connections to the research of natural processes and vice versa. It was furthermore interesting to see, that social sciences and natural sciences both use modern information techniques like "mind maps" or smartphone apps, underlining the importance of data science and the use of models in future research endeavors.
