Possible topics for B.Sc. and M.Sc. theses in the Bioclimatology Group
In order to make the assignment and supervision of B.Sc. and M.Sc. theses in our Bioclimatology Group more transparent and fairer, the following application procedure should be applied.
Theses Day
Once every semester, we invite all Bachelor and Master students that are interested in writing a thesis in the Bioclimatology Group to our Theses Day. On this day, we supervisors introduce ourselves, present ideas for thesis topics, possible research questions, and the necessary methodology. Please find below the dates for the upcoming Theses Days and sign up for it under stud.IP (Course: Bioclimatology Theses Day).
How It Works
If you are interested in a specific thesis topic, you can apply for it by writing an email to the respective supervisor (within one month after Theses Day, see deadline below). This email may already include your motivation, possible research questions and hypotheses, your skills, and a rough time schedule.
The supervisor will organize a meeting with all interested students to discuss the details and (if needed) select a candidate. Feedback by the supervisor will be provided shortly thereafter.
More information about the application, possible topics, and the general supervision will be given on the Theses Day.
| Writing thesis during... | Thesis Day | Application Deadline |
|---|---|---|
| ... summer semester 2024 | TBA | TBA |
| ... winter semester 2023/24 | June 27, 2023, 10:00-12:00 FSR 2.7, Büsgenweg 2 |
July 27, 2023 |
Possible Topics
Some topics listed below can be worked on as B.Sc. or M.Sc. thesis and thematically adapted accordingly. The thesis can be written in German or English in our group. Own suggestions for topics are also always welcome. Please, also note that each supervisor will only supervise 1-3 theses per semester.
The main idea is to analyse wind and turbulent flux measurements (either only CO2, or CO2 + sensible and latent heat fluxes) inside heterogeneous agroforestry systems and to study how the wind characteristics and fluxes change according to a varying canopy height at one of the experimental sites of the SIGNAL project, Dornburg (Saale). Please find more information here.
Various approaches to check and assess the quality of meteorological measurements of our study sites should be compared. This study will include a literature research for the various approaches, the application of these approaches with the R or python programming languages to the existing measurements, and a thorough comparison of the filtered data. For the various meteorological variables a different combination of approaches can be of advantage.
In the context of this work, evapotranspiration and CO2 exchange should be measured at the agricultural experimental farm Reinshof (i) by means of hand measurements with a photosynthesis device (LI-6800) and (ii) the evapotranspiration and photosynthesis rates measured on leaf scale should be scaled to the ecosystem and compared with direct eddy covariance measurements. The measurements should be carried out under different environmental conditions over the course of a growing season. The results should give an indication of the reliability of the CO2 and energy fluxes measured at the Reinshof site.
The so-called 'Normalised difference vegetation index' (NDVI) is an indicator of whether surfaces are covered with vegetation or not and in what condition these plants are. This index is often recorded from satellites. The aim of this work is to derive the NDVI from ground-based measurements of radiant flux densities in the near-infrared and red wavelength range and to compare these measurements with hand-held measurements. The automatic measurements are already running in the Forest Botanical Garden and are to be supplemented by campaign-based hand measurements. It would also be conceivable to compare these measurements with satellite-based measurements.
At the weather station in the Forstbotanischer Garten, Göttingen, measurements of meteorological parameters, such as humidity, temperature, pressure, precipitation, wind speed and direction, as well as radiation, have been carried out for some time using two different compact measuring devices. The aim is to evaluate these two measuring devices with regard to their comparability.
At the weather station in the Forstbotanischer Garten, Göttingen, measurements of meteorological parameters such as humidity, temperature, pressure, precipitation, wind speed and direction, as well as radiation, have been carried out for some time using two different compact measuring devices. One of the two compact measuring stations derives the global radiation from measurements of the light intensity, while the other sensor measures the global radiation directly. The aim of this work is to compare this low-cost global radiation sensor with high-quality devices and to evaluate the conversion algorithms used with regard to their usability. Furthermore, the measured luminous intensity is to be compared with hand measurements.
In this work, methods for determining current (eddy covariance and flux gradient method) and potential evaporation (evaporation pan and Pichéevaporimeter) are to be calculated with values from empirically derived equations. In this work, they draw on values that have already been collected and also carry out measurements themselves.
For more than two years, phenological camera photos of the vegetation have been taken every half hour at the Reinshof experimental farm. From these photos, the 'greenness' parameter can be derived, which indicates how high the green content is. This index correlates positively with the CO2 uptake. The aim of this work is to derive the greenness index from the phenological camera images and to correlate it with the CO2 uptake and
other meteorological parameters. This requires a good knowledge of a programming language, e.g. R or Python. The phenopix R package is used to evaluate the photos.
We obtain CO2 concentration measurements with various infrared gas analyzers at our study sites. These analyzers tend to drift in their measurement accuracy and precision with time, thus, a regular calibration is needed. In this thesis project, the concentration data will be reanalyzed considering the instruments’ offsets detected by each calibration and the drift between two calibrations. The impact of this concentration correction on estimated annual ecosystem fluxes should be quantified.