Institute of

AK Climate-Smart Agriculture

Completed Doctorates ...

at the Institute of Climate-Smart Agriculture

We are proud of the PhD students who have successfully completed their doctorate.

Tino Peplau

Tino Peplau successfully defended his doctoral thesis entitled "Effects of temperature and land use change on soil organic matter dynamics in a permafrost-affected ecosystem" on 17.3.2023 in Hannover.

Julia Schröder

On 26 October 2022, Julia Schröder defended and completed her doctoral thesis on "Microbial carbon cycling as affected by land use in subarctic soils under global warming" at the Institute of Geoecology at TU Braunschweig with distinction.

Björn Kemman

On June 29th, 2022, Björn Kemmann successfully defended his PhD thesis “Assessment of field-derived greenhouse gas mitigation potential in biomass production by replacing maize with cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum) in low mountain ranges” at the Faculty of Agricultural and Nutritional Sciences in the Department of Agronomy at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel (Prof. Dr. Henning Kage).

Annelie Säurich

On February 4th, 2022, Annelie Säurich successfully defended her doctoral thesis “Influences on mineralisation rates of organic soils under agriculture” at the Faculty of Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Geography and Geosciences of the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz (Soil Geography, Prof. Sabine Fiedler). The thesis was part of the first German Agricultural Soil Inventory.

Fabian Kalks

Fabian Kalks completed his doctorate on 20 July 2021 with a successful defence at the Technical University Braunschweig. His topic was the conversion of soil carbon in the subsoil, i.e. below a depth of approx. 30 cm.

Kanisios Mukwashi

On June 1st 2021, Kanisios Mukwashi successfully completed his doctoral thesis "Explaining temporal variability of and quantifying the impact of livestock grazing intensity on carbon and energy exchange in semi-arid near-natural and managed savanna ecosystems in South Africa".

Florian Schneider

On 15.09.2020 Florian Schneider defended his PhD thesis on "Root-restricting layers in German Agricultural soils - Extent, cause and management strategies" at the University of Bonn with distinction.

Angelica Jaconi

On Dec. 16, 2019, Angélica Jaconi defended and completed her doctoral thesis on "Determination of soil properties using NIRS and chemometrics analysis on a regional data set" at the Humboldt University of Berlin.

Frederik Schrader

On 03.07.2019, Frederik Schrader successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Challenges and perspectives in modelling biosphere-atmosphere exchange of ammonia" at the Faculty of Science of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His work was based on research within the BMBF Junior Research Group "NITROSPHERE" and the UBA project "FORESTFLUX".

Cora Vos

On November 29th 2018, Cora Vos successfully defended her doctoral thesis ‘Spatial variability and driving factors for soil organic carbon stocks, quality and saturation in agricultural soils of Germany’ at the Faculty of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Environmental Sciences of the Technical University Braunschweig.

Viridiana Alcántara Cervantes

Viridiana Alcántara Cervantes succesfully defended her doctoral thesis on May 31st, 2017 at the Faculty of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Environmental Sciences of the Technical University Braunschweig. The doctoral thesis was accomplished within the framework of the DFG project “Burial of soil organic matter for carbon sequestration in soils – potentials, processes and long-term effects”.

Johanna Untenecker

On May 16th, 2017, Johanna Untenecker successfully defended her doctoral thesis “Developing methods for tracking land-use changes from heterogeneous data sources – examples from north-east Germany” at the Faculty of Mathematics, Computing Science and Information Technology, Physics, Geography of Justus-Liebig-University Gießen.

Caroline Buchen

Caroline Buchen successfully defended her doctoral thesis on "The fate of nitrogen after grassland renewal and grassland conversion to maize cropping – An investigation of N2O processes and mineral N dynamics at the field scale" on 27.01.2017 at the Faculty of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Environmental Sciences of the Technical University Braunschweig.

Stefan Frank

On the 20th of October 2016, Stefan Frank successfully defended his doctoral thesis “Factors controlling concentrations and losses of dissolved carbon and nitrogen from disturbed bogs in Lower Saxony (Germany)” at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the Leibniz-University Hanover.

Ullrich Dettmann

On the 13th of May 2016, Ullrich Dettmann successfully defended his doctoral thesis „Improving the determination of soil hydraulic properties of peat soils at different scales” at the University of Rostock.

Marco Gronwald

Marco Gronwald has completed his doctoral thesis within three years and successfully defended it at the University of Hanover on 05/11/2016. His work on the influence of biochar on the carbon and nutrient dynamics in agricultural soils was part of the project "Biochar in agriculture". Furthermore, the dissertation was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG-Research Training Group 1397 “Regulation of soil organic matter and nutrient turnover in organic agriculture”).

Jasmin Miltz

Jasmin Miltz successfully defended her doctoral thesis on "Analysing soil organic carbon using near infrared spectroscopy in the laboratory and in the field on-line" on 9.5.2016 at the TU Braunschweig.

Katharina Leiber-Sauheitl

On 16.12.2015, Katharina Leiber-Sauheitl successfully defended her doctoral thesis on greenhouse gas emissions from managed organic soils at the Leibniz University of Hannover.

Marianna Deppe

How does reduced summer precipitation affect greenhouse gas emission from agricultural soils? Can nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture be reduced by placed N fertilization? These questions were addressed by Marianna Deppe during her dissertation project at the Thünen-Institute for Climate-Smart-Agriculture.

Nina Eibisch

Nina Eibisch successfully defended her doctoral thesis „Physico-chemical properties and effects of biochars from hydrothermal carbonization and pyrolysis of organic residues in agricultural soils” on March 30, 2015, at the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover.

Katja Walter

On 26.01.2015, Katja Walter successfully defended her doctoral thesis on climate mitigation potential of bioenergy at the TU Braunschweig. The work named „Climate mitigation potential of annual and perennial bioenergy crops – Focusing on soil processes influencing the greenhouse gas balance” aimed at comparing different bioenergy crops regarding their contribution to greenhouse gas reduction.

Miriam Hurkuck

On 31.10.2014, Miriam Hurkuck successfully defended her doctoral thesis on „How peatland is affected by neighboring agriculture: Atmospheric nitrogen deposition and potential effects on net ecosystem carbon dioxide exchange at a semi-natural peatland site in Northwestern Germany“ at ETH Zurich.

Ulrike Wolf

On 31.07.2014, Ulrike Wolf successfully defended her doctoral thesis on "Emission of NH3, N2O and CO2 following the application of differently treated digestates from biogas production" at TU Braunschweig.

Lena Rohe

Lena Rohe defended her thesis „Nitrous oxide from fungal denitrification – Pure culture and soil studies using stable isotope and microbial inhibitor approaches“ at Georg-August University of Göttingen, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences on May 14th 2014.

Christopher Poeplau

Christopher Poeplau is the first PhD student who finished his thesis at the Thünen Institute of Climate-Smart Agriculture. He completed his thesis within three years in December 2012 and successfully defended his thesis at the Technical University Braunschweig. The title of the thesis was „The effect of land-use change on soil organic carbon stocks and quality in Europe“ and was part of the European project GHG-Europe.

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