My research aims to understand patterns, processes, and impacts of land use and land cover change due to large-scale land acquisitions, and how these changes affect people and the environment.
For my PhD research, I focus on three key challenges that relate to
1) the global shift in land ownership, what are the relationships between distant places?
2) Socio-environmental change and water, can we identify areas at high risk of water conflict between different water users?
3) People and the environment, how can we understand socio-environmental interactions and impacts?
I approach these challenges by analyzing spatiotemporal patterns and socio-environmental processes of LULCC across global and local scales by mapping countries involved in the global ‘trade of land’ through large-scale land acquisitions, and by describing the connectivity and vulnerability of these countries as a telecoupled system. By calculating water requirements of the land acquisitions currently in production in Africa, and analyzing how water demand relate to water availability of that location. By exploring human-environment interactions and explaining how ecosystems and people affect and are affected by land use and land cover change in areas of large-scale land acquisitions.