Research and teaching at the Chair focus on the application of economic knowledge to problems of environmental and resource management, in particular the preservation of ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation. Methods and approaches include, among others, ecological-economic modelling, the development of decision support software, as well as stakeholder interviews and choice experiments.
News
A new policy brief from the ECO²SCAPE project, in which our chair participated, has been published. It highlights the potential of passive acoustic monitoring for promoting biodiversity in agriculture.
Link to the policy brief
Link to the news article
A paper co-authored by Cosima van Mierlo won the Best PhD Paper Award at the Sustainable and Impact Investments International Conference 2026. You can find more information here.
On Wednesday, January 14, 2026, Frank Wätzold moderated an event with Martin Schulz, former President of the European Parliament and current chairperson of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, on the topic of “Europe under pressure” at the BTU.
Frank Wätzold co-authored an article called “A Framework for Multidimensional Management of Invasive Alien Insect Pests in Sub-Saharan Africa”, which has been available in the Journal of Entomology since January 13, 2026.
Frank Wätzold gave an online lecture on the topic of ‘Cool Trail: Europe's first (?) climate change-adapted cycle path’ at the Roadshow Radverkehr (Professor Claudia Hille) at Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences on 12 January 2026.
The department's Christmas party took place on December 16, 2025, together with Charlotte Gerling's junior research group. We look back on a successful 2025 and are already looking forward to everything that 2026 will bring.
At the end of 2025 Somaiyeh Nezhadkheirollah and Martin Drechsler published a paper with the titel "Collaborative Approaches and Instruments for the Spatial Management of Agricultural Pests." in Regional Science and Environmental Economics as well as having a pre-print available called "Incentivizing Natural Pest Control on the Landscape Scale: An Ecological-Economic Model Analysis."
We congratulate Henrique Manhique on passing his dissertation with the title:" Economic analysis of multifunctional fruit production landscapes to promote biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. BTU Cottbus - Senftenberg."