Sophia Meyer finished her master’s degree in Urban Ecosystem Sciences at the Technische Universität Berlin and focused on the effect of urban habitat fragmentation on plant functional traits in her master’s thesis. Now Sophia starts her PhD in the SEBAS project – Sensing Biodiversity Across Scales, a project in cooperation with remote sensing scientists of the University of Bonn. The major mission of this project is to investigate how land use affects the interplay between biodiversity – ecosystem functions – and ecosystem services on different spatial and temporal scales in differently intensive used grasslands of Germany.

Irene Wangari Mukure completed her master’s in Landscape Ecology and Nature Conservation from Greifswald University. Irene will be doing her PhD research in the DFG funded Collaborative Research Centre, Project A01, focusing on coupled socio-ecological systems research, exploring the differential impact of cattle grazing and wildlife browsing/grazing on vegetation and carbon storage in Nambia and Zambia.

Hannah Weeks completed her master’s in Environmental Sciences at the Universität zu Köln earlier this year and will continue her work with AG Linstädter, officially transitioning to starting her PhD. Hannah will continue her research on urban gardens, biodiversity conservation and climate change now focused within the Potsdam-Berlin region and will be working with the Botanical Garden of Potsdam.