Work address:

Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management

Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen

Øster Voldgade 10

1350 Copenhagen K

Denmark

Phone (Office): + 45 35 33 34 12

Phone (Mobile): + 45 30 25 18 34

Email: [email protected]

Research areas

• Carbon and nutrient dynamics in tropical agro-ecosystems
• Effects of land use changes on carbon storage in soil and vegetation
• Climate change mitigation in the land use sector
• Adaptation to climate change in the land use sector
• Agro-Ecological intensification of small-scale tropical farming systems
• Soil quality indicators

Education

2009: PhD in geography from Department of Geography and Geology, University of Copenhagen. Title of thesis: ‘Influence of land use and inherent soil properties on the storage and turnover of soil organic carbon in tropical soils’. 

2004: MSc in geography from Department of Geography, University of Copenhagen.

Employments

2015 - Now: Associate Professor at Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Section of Geography, University of Copenhagen.

2009 - 2015: Assistant Professor in ‘Land use, greenhouse gasses and carbon storage in tropical agro -ecosystems’ at Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Plant and Soil Science, University of Copenhagen.

2005 – 2009: PhD fellow at Department of Geography and Geology, University of Copenhagen.

2001 – 2005: Research assistant at Department of Geography and Geology, University of Copenhagen, at Centre for Research in Forests and Landscapes and at The Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University.

Selected Projects

2024: Planet Chicken: Chemical entanglements in Asia’s poultry boom. Funded by the Australian Research Council. In this interdisciplinary project we will investigate the political ecology of the Asian broiler boom and – among other things - reveal how markets, knowledge production and cultural practices shape the use of agricultural chemicals and veterinary drugs, and how these impact biophysical landscapes.

2023: ’Salomonøerne - Et af Klimaforandringernes Brændpunkter'. Funded by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This is a science communication project in which we will develop an interview-based podcast about impacts of climate change in the Solomon Islands.

2020: 'Fair for whom? Politics, power and precarity in transformations of tropical forest-agriculture frontiers'. Funded by the Research Institute for Humanities and Nature, Kyoto. This interdisciplinary project focuses generate evidence of the social and ecological effects of transformations of shifting cultivation on ecosystems and people in different contexts and analyze possibilities for alternative pathways of change. 

2018: Coupled 'Operationalising Telecoupling for Solving Sustainability Challenges for Land Use'. A European Training Network, which is granted by the European Commission in Horizon 2020. I am leading one of the work packages in this program that involves a consortium of 8 European Universities, 15 PhD students and 13 partners from companies, NGOs, international organizations and administrative bodies.

2017: Beyond the 'Supermarket Revolution Myopia' - Traditional Markets and Sustainable Upgrading Opportunities in Domestic Food Value Chains. Funded by Independent Danish Research Fund for Social Sciences. The project focuses on agricultural transformation processes by examining traditional and modern food value chains and implications for livelihoods and the environment. The project is based in Thailand.

2017: PISAI - Participatory and Integrative Support for Agricultural Initiative. An Erasmus+ Capacity building initiative funded by The Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency under The European Commission. The aim of this project is to develop a double Master’s degree program in agriculture for leading Thai Universities in cooperation with European institutions.

2015: ‘Impacts of Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation’ (i-REDD) - a 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission. My focus is on assessing carbon storage in soil and vegetation under different land use systems in Laos and Indonesia and on developing cost-efficient methods for measuring land use induced changes in soil carbon stocks.

2014: ‘KOYOKA’ . Development of a distance education module in ‘Assessing Transformation in Smallholder Agricultural Systems and Natural Resource Management’. Funded by the Agropolis Fondation and carried out in collaboration with partners from CIRAD, Montpellier SupAgro, CATIE (Costa Rica), Makerere University (Uganda), Sokoine University of Agriculture (Tanzania), Egerton University (Kenya), and Wageningen University, The Netherlands.

2011: 'Assessment of the effects of small scale oil palm cultivation on soil carbon stocks'. PI in a project funded by the Consortium for Sustainable Land Use and Natural Resource Management and carried out in collaboration with Universiti Malaysia Sarawak.

2011: 'Environmental effects of a land use transition from extensive agriculture to intensive maize production in Northern Thailand'. PI in a project funded by the Consortium for Sustainable Land Use and Natural Resource Management and carried out in collaboration with Maejo University, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

2010: 'Project de faisabilité des resource de l’énergi renouvelables au Mali'. Project funded by the Danish National Development Cooperation, DANIDA. My contribution was to investigate the environmental impacts of using rice residues and cassava as biofuels in Northern and Southern Mali respectively.

2008: 'Indigenous soil knowledge on Bellona – a Polynesian outlier island in the Solomon Islands'. PIin a small scale project financed by Videnskabernes Selskab.

2006: 'Sustainable Resource use or Imminent Collapse? Climate, livelihoods and production in the Southwest Pacific' (CLIP). Interdisciplinary research project carried out as a part of the Galathea3 research expedition. My contribution was related to the environmental sustainability of isolated agricultural systems and effects of land use and soil type on soil carbon stocks.

2006: 'Carbon storage in different soil types after conversion of forests to permanent agriculture in Ghana'. PI in a study financed by Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen and carried out in collaboration with researchers from University of Legon, Ghana.

2005: 'Environmental sustainability of shifting cultivation systems in the Nghe An province, Northern Vietnam'. A capacity building project financed by the Danish National Development Cooperation, DANIDA and carried out in collaboration with Hanoi Agricultural University.

Teaching and supervision

I am currently responsible for the course ‘Climate Change – An Interdisciplinary Challenge’ which is one of the basic courses under the MSc program in Climate Change at University of Copenhagen. I have been coordinating an educational program in Sustainable Land Use and Natural Resource Management (SLUSE) and been responsible for the associated field course that involves two Danish Universities and 10 partner universities in South East Asia and Africa (www.sluse.dk).

Teaching Activities at MSc or PhD level

• Interdisciplinary field methodology in Agricultural Innovations  (Uganda) (PhD)
• Plant nutrients in terrestrial ecosystems (PhD)
• Interdisciplinary Land Use and Natural Resource Management (MSc)
• Climate Change – An Interdisciplinary Challenge (MSc)
• Klimaakademiet (Rethos Academy and CONCITO)
• Field course in Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Agricultural Production (Thailand) (MSc)
• Tropical Crop Production (MSc)
• Human Adaptation to Climate Change (MSc)
• Sustainable Intensification Pathways (MSc)
• Qualitative Methods in Agricultural Development (MSc)
• Land Use and Global Change (MSc)
• Globalisation and Spatial Change (MSc)

I have supervised 40 MSc students, six PhD students and three post docs.

Current PhD students:

Janelle Marie Sylvester (2021-Now): Drivers of land degradation in agricultural landscapes in Columbia.

Completed PhD students

Von Yi Yap (2013-2017): 'The potential and constraints of adopting legumes in maize-based cropping systems within small scale farming systems of Northern Thailand'

Catherine Maria Hepp (2013-2017): 'Sustainable intensification strategies and improved nutrient use efficiency in upland farming systems in Southeast Asia’

Proyuth Ly (2009 - 2012): 'Low external input tropical agriculture: livelihoods, greenhouse gasses and sustainability: a study on the role of the system of rice intensification (SRI) in rain-fed lowland rice ecosystem in Cambodia'

Niharika Rahmen (2012-2022): 'Environmental efficiencies and controversies: Yield intensification in oil palm production systems of South East Asia'

Pin Pravalprukskul (2019-2022): Sustainable sourcing of agricultural commodities, spill-over effects and global-local relations. 

Memberships and Special duties

• Associate editor of Land Degradation and Development
• Associate editor of Carbon Footprints
• Head of steering committee of the Working Group on 'Shifting Cultivation in Transition' under the Global Land Programme
• Representing University of Copenhagen in The European Alliance on Agricultural knowledge for Development (Agrinatura)
• Member of more than ten academic assessment committees

• Carbon and nutrient dynamics in tropical agro-ecosystems
• Effects of land use changes on carbon storage in soil and vegetation
• Climate change mitigation in the land use sector
• Adaptation to climate change in the land use sector
• Agro-Ecological intensification of small-scale tropical farming systems
• Shifting cultivation
• Soil quality indicators

I am currently involved in a study that is focusing on the sustainability of the maize feed value chain in Thailand and neighboring countries that are currently experiencing a boom in maize production due to increased demand from a growing livestock industry. The maize boom has resulted in  conversion of large areas from traditional extensive shifting cultivation and forests to intensive, annual monocropping of maize. We are investigating the environmental and socio-economic impacts and possible feedback effects of the expansion of maize production, and trying to understand the complex cross-border connections between land use systems in Thailand and its neighbors.

I am also working on a research project that is examining agricultural transformation processes in Thailand through a comparative analysis of the traditional and modern food value chains and the implications for livelihoods and the environment. The research project seeks to develop a framework for studying these food value chains simultaneously and in relation to each other. By conceiving food value chains as systems of resource flows, our analytical framework provides an integration of value chain analysis with environmental interactions that occur at every node in the chains.

Finally, I am engaged in a study of the impacts of land use on soil quality, biodiversity and carbon storage in soil and vegetation in the Peruvian Amazon. We are assessing the carbon stocks of various land use systems by direct measurements and using destructive sampling (including excavation) to develop new allometric equations to accurately estimate biomass of trees in secondary forests.

My recent research has focused on the environmental effects of some of the dominant land use changes that are currently taking place in South East Asia - for example the transitions from traditional land use systems to systems that are dominated by oil palm plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia or the change from shifting cultivation to intensive cultivation of maize in Thailand. I have also been involved in a study comparing carbon storage in rubber plantations and in shifting cultivation systems under various levels of intensification in northern Laos. I have participated in several interdisciplinary research projects investigating drivers and consequences of land use change in South East Asia, in projects investigating adaptation to climate change in the Solomon Islands and in studies of the sustainability of agricultural production in small scale farming systems of Vietnam.

The regional focus of my research is Northern Laos, Northern Thailand, Malaysian Borneo, Indonesia, Northern Vietnam, Ghana, Southern Mali and Solomon Islands.

I am a part of a European research and training network called 'Operationalising Telecoupling for Solving Sustainability Challenges for Land Use' (Coupled), that involves 8 European Universities and 15 doctoral students who are doing research on sustainable land use through the concept of telecoupling. Read more about this project here.

I am leading a Global Land Project (GLP) working group on shifting cultivation in transition. Read about this initiative here.

I am also participating in the ‘Participatory and Integrative Support for Agricultural Initiative’ (PISAI) - an Erasmus+ program aiming to develop a double Master’s degree program in agriculture for leading Thai Universities in cooperation with European institutions. Read more about PISAI here.

I am responsible for the MSc course 'Climate Change - an Interdisciplinary Challenge' that is one of the mandatory courses at the MSc in Climate Change – a 2 year interdisciplinary MSc program combining natural and social science approaches to studying climate change - offered at University of Copenhagen.