Annemarie WurzPhilipps University of Marburg | PUM · Fachgebiet Naturschutz
Annemarie Wurz
PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher in the Conservation Biology Group at the University of Marburg
About
23
Publications
11,875
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
368
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
PhD student in Agroecology group in the research project Diversity Turn in Land Use Science researching on butterfly diversity in northeastern Madagascar. I am interested in biodiversity yield trade-offs in crop production systems, pollination limitation in crops as well as agroforestry and land use research in general.
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (23)
Resolving ecological-economic trade-offs between biodiversity and yields is a key challenge when addressing the biodiversity crisis in tropical agricultural landscapes. Here, we focused on the relation between seven different taxa (trees, herbaceous plants, birds, amphibians, reptiles, butterflies, and ants) and yields in vanilla agroforests in Mad...
1. The conversion of tropical forests into agriculture reduces biodiversity dramatically. However, species might differ in their responses, depending on their habitat specialisation and geographic origin. In this study, we assess how butterfly assemblages differ between old-growth forests, forest fragments, forest-derived vanilla agroforests, fallo...
Trees in agroforestry systems provide multiple ecological and economic functions. Smallholder vanilla agroforests include shade trees common across agroforestry systems, and small-statured support trees carrying the vanilla vine. Support trees have received little scientific attention so far. The objectives of our study were to assess the diversity...
Significance
Finding entry points where policy has strong leverage to transform land systems for people and nature is pivotal. We develop an innovative framework to identify and evaluate such leverage points along land-use trajectories that account for path dependency. Applied to the biodiversity hotspot Madagascar, the framework reveals three leve...
Large expanses of tropical rainforest have been converted into agricultural landscapes cultivated by smallholder farmers. This is also the case in north-eastern Madagascar; a region that retains significant proportions of forest cover despite slash-and-burn shifting hill rice cultivation and vanilla agroforestry expansion. The region is also a glob...
Understanding how land-use change affects biodiversity is a fundamental step to develop effective conservation strategies in human-modified tropical landscapes. Here, we analyzed how land-use change through tropical small-scale agriculture affects endemic, exotic, and non-endemic native ant communities, focusing on vanilla landscapes in northeaster...
Forests and tree-dominated land uses store large amounts of carbon stocks in plant biomass. However, anthropogenic changes in land use and land cover decrease tree cover and associated carbon stocks. Agroforestry has the potential to maintain or restore carbon in plant biomass but the amount will be influenced by various factors that may include la...
Agroforestry can contribute to an increase in tree cover in historically forested tropical landscapes with associated gains in biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, but only if established on open land instead of underneath a forest canopy. However, declines in yields with increasing shade are common across agroforestry crops, driving shade-tree...
Global pollinator declines and land-use change can lead to pollination limitation with implications for agricultural productivity. Hand pollination is used in agricultural production as a technique to manually pollinate crops. But the prevalence of hand pollination, as well as benefits and costs, remain unknown. We systematically reviewed the liter...
Forests and tree-dominated land uses store large amounts of carbon stocks in plant biomass. However, anthropogenic changes in land use and land cover decrease tree cover and associated carbon stocks. Agroforestry has the potential to maintain or restore carbon in plant biomass but the amount will be influenced by various factors that may include la...
Aim: Northeastern Madagascar is a hotspot of plant diversity, but vanilla and rice farming are driving land-use change, including slash-and-burn management. It still remains unknown how land-use change and land-use history affect richness and composition of endemic, native and exotic herbaceous plant species.
Location: Northeastern Madagascar.
Me...
Now published in Animal Conservation (Open Access) https://doi.org/10.1111/acv.12760
Question: In human-modified tropical landscapes, agroforestry is considered a promising land use to reconcile biodiversity conservation with production goals. The role of agroforests regarding conservation may be strongly influenced by land-use history; however, few studies have explicitly investigated this. We therefore tested the importance of la...
en Land‐use change is the most important driver of biodiversity loss worldwide and particularly so in the tropics, where natural habitats are transformed into large‐scale monocultures or heterogeneous landscape mosaics of largely unknown conservation value. Using birds as an indicator taxon, we evaluated the conservation value of a landscape mosaic...
New technologies like ecoacoustic surveys promise time and cost efficiency for biodiversity assessments, serve as a basis for effective conservation policies, and are particularly appealing for remote and highly diverse tropical areas. Acoustic indices facilitate the analysis of large acoustic datasets but no consensus on their performance has been...
1. Land-use change is the main driver of deforestation and land degradation resulting in the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in northeastern Madagascar. Vanilla, the region's main cash crop, is grown in agroforestry systems and may provide an opportunity for the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. 2. We used dummy...
Agroforestry can contribute to an increase in tree cover in historically forested tropical landscapes with associated gains in biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, but only if established on open land instead of inside forest. However, trade-offs between shade and crop yields are common across many agroforestry crops, driving shade-tree loss in...
Agroforestry is widely promoted as a potential solution to address multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals, including Zero Hunger, Responsible Consumption and Production, Climate Action, and Life on Land. Nonetheless, agroforests in the tropics often result from direct forest conversions, displacing rapidly vanishing and highly biodiverse forests...
1. The land-sharing versus land-sparing debate recently stagnated, lacking an integrating perspective in agricultural landscapes as well as consideration of ecosystem services. Here, we argue that land-sharing (i.e. wildlife-friendly farming systems) and land-sparing (i.e. separation of high-yielding agriculture and natural habitats) are not mutual...
Madagascar is one of the most threatened biodiversity hotspots globally and land-use change - mainly driven by small-scale agriculture - is a key threat. In NE Madagascar, subsistence farming and vanilla cash-cropping results in a mosaic of smallholder agriculture, vanilla agroforestry and forest fragments. However, the value of this cultural lands...
The SAVA region in north-eastern Madagascar is the global centre of vanilla production. Here, around 70,000 farmers are estimated to produce 70-80% of all global bourbon vanilla. Yet, little is known about the farming population, their livelihoods, and the impact of vanilla cultivation on biodiversity.
This publication presents the results of the D...
The SAVA Region in north-eastern Madagascar is the global centre of vanilla production. Here, around 70,000 farmers are estimated to produce 70-80% of all global bourbon vanilla. Yet, little is known about the farming population, their livelihoods, and the impact of vanilla cultivation on biodiversity.
This publication presents the results of the...
Land use change is the main reason for the decline of biodiversity. While forests and protected areas are indispensable to protect biodiversity, structurally rich landscapes with small-scale agriculture, agroforestry and forest remnants can sustain a substantial amount of biodiversity in the tropics.
In Madagascar, high diversity of species and hig...
Questions
Question (1)
This is an exciting project! We work on vanilla planifolia plantations in North-Eastern Madagascar & we have made many observations of ants on vanilla harvesting extra-floral nectar. Our project is called "Diversity Turn in Land Use Science" and the ecologists of our project are currently assessing the biodiversity on vanilla plantations and alternative land-use types in order to define the value of vanilla plantations for conservation. Our PhD student focusing on ants has collected ants via baiting and pitfall trapping. However, the topic with vanilla-ant mutualism is still a mystery to us - however pre-studies are needed to define common pest. However, our vanilla pest damage shows so far, that herbivory is seemingly minor problem. Looking forward to find out more about your project!
Projects
Project (1)
Land use substantially impacts human living conditions and livelihoods worldwide. Because of the complex interaction of ecological, economic and social factors, the design of land use innovations is a paradigmatic case of sustainability research. Land use research requires a balanced attention on biophysical aspects of ecological systems as well as in the social arrangements that shape rural land use. The elements and relations within the social system as well as within ecological systems are both diverse. Yet, a systematic integration of the state-of-the-art in the social science diversity debate is still lacking for environmental sustainability research at large as well as for land use research in particular. Thus, it is the overall aim of this project to advance a diversity-sensitive perspective for land use research, and to establish this perspective as a core component in academic teaching and research including the education of junior scientists.
A detailed description of the research project can be found here : https://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/531390.html
