Chair for social-ecological interactions in agricultural systems

Research Projects

agri:lab X4: Integrated agricultural landscape development

... more to come

RurbanAgroforestry: Effects of tree-based agriculture on ecosystem services supply, distribution, and access in a rurban environment

Project A01 aims to investigate the potential of tree-based agriculture to promote sustainable rurbanity in urbanising regions of Morocco, serving as a social-ecological model system. By combining biophysical and sociocultural data at various scales, the project aims to provide a novel understanding of the impact of tree-based agricultural development on ecosystem service supply, distribution, and access, and its contribution to the formation of rurbanity. Furthermore, the project seeks to examine how tree-based agriculture has transformed the rurban landscape using remote sensing and field-level data. The project intends to develop a more comprehensive conceptualisation of multifunctional agricultural landscapes in rurban environments through this analysis of the social-ecological context and spatial-temporal dynamics.

WIN: Restoring the biodiversity and utility values of coppice forests

The importance of historical forms of forest use such as coppice forests for the development and conservation of biodiversity in need of protection is increasingly recognized in science and practice. Nevertheless, only a few stands of these forms of management remain today. The aim of the project is therefore to develop new management concepts that contribute to the preservation and reactivation of coppice forests. As part of the third sub-project, we will focus on local and regional stakeholders who are interested in the restoration of biodiversity and use values, who make decisions on coppice forests or who are affected by them. In a first step, we will identify all stakeholders potentially interested in and / or affected by the conservation and reactivation of coppice and coppice forest management. We will then describe the decision-making context of the stakeholders by mapping their knowledge, value and rules systems. Based on these results as well as on findings from the other sub-projects on economic and ecological values of coppice and medium sized forests, strategies for their conservation and re-establishment will be developed. The project is being carried out jointly with the Forest Nature Conservation Department of the Northwest German Forest Research Institute (NW-FVA) and the Chair of Forest Economics and Sustainable Land Use Planning at the University of Göttingen.
Contact: pia.jensen@uni-goettingen.de; marion.jay@uni-goettingen.de & plieninger@uni-kassel.de

Biodiversity Exploratories: Biodiversity Exploratories as Biocultural Landscapes: Past, Present and Future

Biocultural landscapes have rich cultural and biological diversity, and are threatened by agricultural intensification. The aim of this project is to build a comprehensive picture of past, present and future biocultural diversity across three regions in Germany: Schorfheide-Chorin, Hainich-Dün, and the Swabian Alb. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, including oral history interviews, photo-elicitation and scenario workshops, we will investigate local people’s perceptions of land-use change and expectations for the future of nature in their region. This project is led by Prof. Tobias Plieninger and Dr. Emmeline Topp and comes under the umbrella of the Biodiversity Exploratories, a flagship long-term biodiversity research program funded by the DFG.

TransforMed: Supporting and promoting large-scale adoption of successful agroforestry systems (AFS)

Based on the experiences of several agroforestry lighthouses in Morocco, Tunisia, and Türkiye, TransforMed aims to support and promote a large-scale adoption of successful agroforestry systems (AFS) in saline and degraded areas to restore soil health, increase biodiversity and productivity of the agroecosystems by overcoming the socioeconomic and sociocultural barriers.

GI SMART: Investigating the contribution of geographical indications (GIs) to sustainable development and optimizing support for newly established schemes

The main objective of the project is to enhance the design and implementation of the GI system to support sustainable agriculture, healthy and sustainable food, and sustainable food systems, in line with the objectives of the Farm to Fork strategy.
In the project, the role of the University of Kassel will be to cluster the main groups of GIs agri-food systems across Europe, and mapping of good sustainability practices. This will lead to a set of transition pathways for stakeholders of geographical indications who want to achieve greater sustainability and better value and valorisation of the sustainable outcome. Further, University Kassel will be responsible for developing and carrying out case studies in Germany and Austria.
The GI Smart consortium is made up of 17 public and private partners from 8 European Member States (France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Spain), from UK and Switzerland. It will be coordinated by INRAE – National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (France).
Contact: flinzberger@uni-kassel.de & plieninger@uni-kassel.de

RESTORE: Nature’s Contributions to People in Restoration Landscapes in Western Rwanda

Subproject six (SP6), "Nature's contributions to people in restored landscapes in western Rwanda," aims to capture the multiple tangible and intangible values that people attribute to ecosystems in restored landscapes. We will also explore the extent to which different kinds of knowledge and the plural values and rules of local and distant (inter)national actors shape and guide nature's contributions to people. To capture nature's contributions to people, we will develop valuation approaches from three different perspectives: an ecosystem perspective, a landscape perspective, and a cross-scale perspective. To this end, we will combine socio-cultural assessment methods (e.g., photovoice, photo elicitation, and narrative assessment) and participatory, spatial survey methods.
Contact: laura.kmoch@uni-goettingen.de; gaelle.ndayizeye@uni-goettingen.de & plieninger@uni-goettingen.de

Dr. Cortés-Capano: Rural Transitions Toward Multifunctional Landscapes in Europe

Dr. Gonzalo Cortés-Capano works on a project called “Rural Transitions Toward Multifunctional Landscapes in Europe” investigates how rural transitions toward sustainable and multifunctional futures are enacted and experienced by farmers and other rural actors across diverse landscapes. Through comparative case studies in the French Alps and central Germany, it examines how actors’ motivations, landscape dynamics, and institutional frameworks interact in practice to produce multiple transition pathways. Using ethnographic and narrative methods, the research contributes to rural development debates by revealing how everyday practices, struggles, and social innovations shape broader processes of landscape transformation and environmental justice. He is funded as a Humboldt fellow at the SEI chair.

RECONNECT: Reconciling fragmented and contested landscapes

RECONNECT is a three-year project funded through the European Biodiversity Partnership “BiodivERsA+”. To help stopping the ongoing biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation the recent agreement on the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework as well as the European Biodiversity Strategy have set, among others, a clear target of 30% of protected terrestrial areas to be achieved by 2030. While this target has been welcomed by many, fragmentation, contestation, and disconnection between biodiversity conservation and other aspects of contemporary landscapes and societies still mostly prevail, leading to tensions between conservation, equity, and production goals, and to clashing governance priorities and land use practices.

In RECONNECT we interrogate social and ecological fragmentations of protected areas in multifunctional landscapes with the aim to identify key points for reconnection interventions. Our group combines governance and institutional analysis, biodiversity and ecosystem service modelling, participatory value mapping and geo-design stakeholder processes in protected areas in France, Germany, South Africa and Sweden. We work with an interdisciplinary team of research centres and universities such as the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the French CNRS lab of alpine ecology, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and local stakeholders.

Contact: marion.jay@uni-goettingen.de & plieninger@uni-goettingen.de

Wood Pastures: Distribution, Biodiversity and Strategies to Re-Establish Agroforestry Use

Agroforestry systems in forests, especially wood pastures, have once been widespread in Central Europe. Today the remaining areas of this use still exist, and show a high degree of biodiversity that is worth protecting.

However, these areas, too, are decreasing, and agroforestry systems are only sporadially re-established. Together with the Department of Forest Conservation of the North-West German Forest Research Institut (NW-FVA), we aim to integrate scientific and practical knowledge on wood pasture management and create the foundations for an evidence-based revival of wood pastures in an adequate model region - especially through a mapping former and current wood pastures, as well as through building a 'community of practice'. The project focuses on North-West Germany.
Contact: plieninger@uni-kassel.de & andreas.moelder@nw-fva.de

KOOPERATIV: Promoting biodiversity at the landscape level

Against the background of agricultural intensification and biodiversity losses, the KOOPERATIV project aims to develop and test a participatory and integrative approach for the landscape-scale implementation of Agri-environmental measures.
Based on the example of perennial flower strips, ideal area proportions as well as spatial configurations will be analyzed, and biodiversity and ecosystem services will be improved in the most cost-efficient way. KOOPERATIV aims to support collaboration of actors in the context of agricultural management and protection. Within the socio-ecological part of the project, supervised by Prof. Tobias Plieninger and Dr. Stefan Schüler, PhD student Jule Huber will analyze relevant framework conditions that could support or hamper the joint implementation of perennial flower strips at landscape level.
This project is funded by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN).
Contact: jule.huber@uni-goettingen.de; stefan.schueler@agr.uni-goettingen.de & plieninger@uni-kassel.de