I am a postdoc in agroecology and I am interested in finding solutions for more sustainable agriculture promoting biodiversity and ecosystem services. Agricultural intensification is one of the main drivers for biodiversity loss, but agricultural production also depends on ecosystem services provided by biodiversity. Therefore, my research focuses on optimizing biodiversity while compromising agricultural production as little as possible. As species usually depend on resources provided at larger spatial scales, I apply landscape scale designs to investigate the effects on species richness across different taxa, functional diversity, plant-pollinator interaction networks, and ecosystem service provision, e.g. crop and wild plant pollination.

More recently, I have focused on the effects of different agri-environment schemes. Their aim is to promote agro-biodiversity and ecosystem services, but their effectiveness has often been questioned. One reason for the partly poor performance might be their implementation at local scales ignoring the species’ needs at larger spatial scales. Additionally, combinations of agri-environment schemes might be necessary to fulfill different habitat requirements. Therefore, we initiated several research projects that investigate the implementation of agri-environment schemes at the landscape scale with different amounts of semi-natural habitat and/or with independent gradients of different agri-environment schemes.

In the project KOOPERATIV we investigate the landscape scale effects of perennial flower fields including their compositional and configurational heterogeneity on a wide range of taxa and their ecosystem services. In this project the collaboration with researchers specialized in agronomy and social-ecological systems is an essential contribution to the implementation of ecologically meaningful measures in practice (www.uni-goettingen.de/kooperativ/project).

In the project ComBee we selected 32 landscapes with independent gradients of two agri-environment schemes (flower fields and organic farming) and study their effects on pollinator diversity, plant-pollinator interactions and health of managed and wild pollinators (www.uni-goettingen.de/ComBee/project).

These projects aim to give insights into the design of innovative and more effective agri-environment schemes at the landscape scale and they will contribute to the development of novel ecological intensification concepts for supporting high biodiversity, but also high agricultural productivity.