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
We congratulate Somaiyeh Nezhadkheirollah on the successful defense of her dissertation, with the title: "Ecological-Economic Modelling of Biological Pest Control".
The manuscript "Cost-effectiveness of centralized versus decentralized decision-making in agri-environment schemes for biodiversity conservation: Insights from an ecological-economic model" co-authored by Caterina De Petris, Martin Drechsler and Frank Wätzold has been accepted for publication in the journal Ecological Economics.
Simeon Onya participated in the 7th World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economics (WCERE 2026), held in Carcavelos, Lisbon, Portugal. At the congress, he presented his research: “Grey or Green Solutions? Household Preferences for Coastal Protection Measures: Evidence from Developing Country Context”.
Frank Wätzold presented a paper on "Using Passive Acoustic Monitoring to Develop State-based Agri-environment Schemes to Conserve Meadow Birds" at the European Congress of Conservation Biology in Leiden, the Netherlands in July 2026.
On 6 July 2026, Astrid Sturm and Tasin Siraj attended the large field day and farm tour on "Virtual Fencing" at the farm Gut & Bösel, Brandenburg. Participants visited two cow stations together with the practitioners on site, saw a live demonstration of virtual fencing by the research team, and heard from experts across Europe about their virtual fencing pilot projects from recent years.
As part of the EU project NBS4Drought, Caterina De Petris visited two of the project's seven wetland showcases (SCs). Taking place from 11 to 16 May 2026 in Poland, the visit involved the riparian wetland of the Świnobródka River (SC6), as well as the peat bogs in the Polesie National Park (SC7).
Mai Nusir recently participated in the Young Leaders Summer Academy in Hamburg, Germany. The academy was organized by the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Helmut Schmidt University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg, and the Institute of International Cooperation and Technological Diplomacy (ICI).
Last Friday, our team went on our annual company outing. This year, we went on a short bike ride from the train station to the Kutzeburg Mill, followed by a picnic at Madlower Lake.