Kathleen Hermans

• PhD
• Senior Researcher at Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies

Forest products provide an important source of income and wellbeing for rural smallholder communities across the tropics. Although tropical forest products frequently become over-exploited, only few studies explicitly address the dynamics of degradation in response to socioeconomic drivers. Our study addresses this gap by analyzing the factors driv...

In Ethiopia, human migration is known to be influenced by environmental change—and vice versa. Thus, degradation of environmental conditions can contribute to out-migration, and in-migration can cause environmental changes at the immigrants’ destination. The aim of our study was to systematically identify regions in which socio-ecological pressures...

Environmental change is an acknowledged factor influencing human migration. Analytical research regarding the relationship between the environment and human migration has increased in recent years yet still faces numerous hurdles, partly due to limited availability of suitable data. We review available data and methodologies for investigating the e...

Projecting migration is challenging, due to the context-specific and discontinuous relations between migration and the socioeconomic and environmental conditions that drive this process. Here, we investigate the usefulness of Machine Learning (ML) Random Forest (RF) models to develop three net migration scenarios in South Asia by 2050 based on hist...

Land degradation threatens livelihoods with the potential to displace vulnerable groups, yet its impacts on migration are poorly understood as environmental migration research mainly focuses on the impacts of climate change on migration. We argue that addressing this gap is vital as land degradation poses risks for sustainability.

Subsistence farmers with high dependency on natural resources are exceptionally vulnerable to rainfall changes. Besides, they are in the front row when it comes to observing these changes. Studies that systematically investigate similarities and differences between measured and perceived rainfall changes are typically limited to trends in rainfall...

Forest decline and degradation are particularly high in the tropics and pose a risk to those who depend on forest resources. The in-migration of smallholders to forest frontiers can fuel transitions of livelihoods and land and resource use. However, the conditions under which in-migration contributes to such transitions remain poorly understood. Wi...

Drylands in sub-Saharan Africa are strongly affected by the impacts of climate change. Temperature increases, changes in rainfall patterns, and land degradation pose serious threats to food security, health, and water availability in the region. The increase in livelihood insecurity can in turn trigger migration as a way to adapt or cope with stres...

Both researchers and policy makers have repeatedly expressed concerns that migration will enhance conflicts regarding renewable resources in destination areas. This concept is fuelled by projections of large future migration flows within the Global South, resulting from armed conflict, global environmental change, and persistent economic inequaliti...

Place-based research faces multiple threats, including both natural and global health hazards and political conflicts, which may disrupt fieldwork. The current COVID-19 pandemic shows how these threats can drastically affect social-ecological research activities given its engagement with different local stakeholders, disciplines, and knowledge syst...

Place-based research faces multiple threats, including both natural and global health hazards and political conflicts, which may disrupt fieldwork. The current COVID-19 pandemic shows how these threats can drastically affect social-ecological research activities given its engagement with different local stakeholders, disciplines, and knowledge syst...

Droughts are significant drivers of land degradation, which in turn has adverse effects on resource-dependent rural populations and can potentially lead to livelihood losses and subsequent migration out of affected areas. Linkages between land degradation and migration are complex and not particularly well documented, as they occur within a larger...

The influence of environmental change on human migration is complex. Despite major strides in understanding the environment’s role in migration processes, uncertainties associated with multi-scale factor interactions and their influence on migration still persist. This study aims to (a) understand how soil degradation and rainfall changes – in comb...

Different types of mobility are known as longstanding strategies used by humans to deal with environmental pressure. Immobility is relevant in this context as population groups may be at considerable risk but lacking the capacity or willingness to move. Despite significant advances in this research field, grasping especially the subjective dimensio...

This chapter examines the scientific understanding of how climate change impacts land degradation, and vice versa, with a focus on non-drylands. Land degradation of drylands is covered in Chapter 3. After providing definitions and the context (Section 4.1) we proceed with a theoretical explanation of the different processes of land degradation and...

Our study examines the effects of drought on livelihoods and human migration in the rural highlands of northern Ethiopia, one of the most affected regions during the 2015 drought. We conducted a household survey contextualized by focus group discussions in two rural sending areas. Drought intensity was similar in both areas, but drought impacts and...

Policy makers across the entire globe have repetitively expressed concern about climate change as a trigger of mass migration and increased political instability. Recent research on both climate-conflict and climate-migration linkages has gained significant attention in the scientific and public debate. Both research fields are deeply intertwined a...

While transdisciplinarity offers a way to tackle complex social-ecological challenges, transdisciplinary research is a challenging task in itself. The integration of research methods across academic disciplines, the collaboration between researchers and practitioners, and the need to balance societal and disciplinary academic impacts pose many diff...

Understanding coping and adaptation behaviour of different population groups in the context of global environmental change has become increasingly important, especially in regions with high vulnerability such as Sub-Saharan drylands. In this regard, household strategies tend to be dependent on local and context-specific conditions. However, the str...

Projected increases in population, income and consumption rates are expected to lead to rising pressure on the land system. Ambitions to limit global warming to 2 °C or even 1.5 °C could also lead to additional pressures from land-based mitigation measures such as bioenergy production and afforestation. To investigate these dynamics, this paper des...

Environmental change can lead to human migration and vice versa. Agent-based models (ABMs) are valuable tools to study these linkages because they can represent individual migration decisions of human actors. Indeed, there is an increasing, yet small, number of ABMs that consider the natural environment in rural migration processes. Therefore, we r...

Ecosystem services (ES), the benefits that humans obtain from nature, are of great importance for human well-being. The challenge of meeting the growing human demands for natural resources while sustaining essential ecosystem functions and resilience requires an in-depth understanding of the complex relationships between ES. These conflicting (‘tra...

Large scale land acquisitions (LSLA), and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) are both land based phenomena which when occurring in the same area, can compete with each other for land. A quantitative analysis of country characteristics revealed that land available for agriculture, accessibility, and political stabil...

In this paper, we present four model-based scenarios exploring the potential for resource efficiency for energy, land and phosphorus use, and implications for resource depletion, climate change and biodiversity. The scenarios explored include technological improvements as well as structural changes in production systems and lifestyle changes. Many...

Emissions from agriculture-driven deforestation are of global concern, but forest land-sparing interventions such as agricultural intensification and utilization of available non-forest land offer opportunities for mitigation. In many tropical countries, where agriculture is the major driver of deforestation, interventions in the agriculture sector...

Climate change and its impacts already pose considerable challenges for societies that will further increase with global warming (IPCC, 2014a, b). Uncertainties of the climatic response to greenhouse gas emissions include the potential passing of large-scale tipping points (e.g. Lenton et al., 2008; Levermann et al., 2012; Schellnhuber, 2010) and c...

The Sahel region has one of the most mobile populations in the world, with migration serving as a common household strategy to increase livelihood and social resilience. However, the Sahel region's population is extremely heterogeneous, and the processes and factors that contribute to migration are complex. Consequently, recent empirical studies yi...

Emissions from agriculture-driven deforestation are of global concern, but forest land-sparing interventions such as agricultural intensification and utilization of available land offer opportunities for mitigation. In many tropical countries, where agriculture is the major driver of deforestation, interventions in the agriculture sector can reduce...

In order to achieve climate change mitigation, long-term decisions are required that must be reconciled with other societal goals that draw on the same resources. For example, ensuring food security for a growing population may require an expansion of crop land, thereby reducing natural carbon sinks or the area available for bio-energy production....

This paper has been accepted by PNAS as: "Multisectoral climate impact hotspots in a warming world."

The impacts of global climate change on different aspects of humanity's diverse life-support systems are complex and often difficult to predict. To facilitate policy decisions on mitigation and adaptation strategies, it is necessary to understand, quantify, and synthesize these climate-change impacts, taking into account their uncertainties. Crucia...

Significance Agriculture is arguably the sector most affected by climate change, but assessments differ and are thus difficult to compare. We provide a globally consistent, protocol-based, multimodel climate change assessment for major crops with explicit characterization of uncertainty. Results with multimodel agreement indicate strong negative ef...

Globally, areas that are equipped for irrigation have almost doubled in size over the past 50 years and further expansions are expected for the future, to meet a growing food demand. For developing countries, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) expects these areas to be expanded by 40 million ha, by 2030. Knowledge abo...

Land use and land cover data play a central role in climate change assessments. These data originate from different sources and inventory techniques. Each source of land use/cover data has its own domain of applicability and quality standards. Often data are selected without explicitly considering the suitability of the data for the specific applic...

The European livestock sector has changed rapidly in the recent past and further changes are expected in the near future due to reforms in the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), increasing environmental concerns and changing consumer awareness. We developed a multi-scale modeling approach for exploring spatial and temporal dynamics of lives...

Global grain production has increased dramatically during the past 50Â years, mainly as a consequence of intensified land management and introduction of new technologies. For the future, a strong increase in grain demand is expected, which may be fulfilled by further agricultural intensification rather than expansion of agricultural area. Little is...

Livestock remains the world’s largest user of land and is strongly related to grassland and feed-crop production. Assessments of environmental impacts of livestock farming require detailed knowledge of the presence of livestock, farming practices, and environmental conditions. The present Europe-wide livestock distribution information is generally...

Eururalis is a scenario study on the future of rural areas in the EU. The time horizon is 2030. It starts from four contrasting world visions and assesses the impact of various drivers such as demography, technology and economic growth. It covers the EU countries in various detail showing impacts for people, planet and profit indicators. These impa...

Given the current lack of interoperability between global and regional land cover products, efforts are underway to link the new European global land cover map (GLOBCOVER) with the existing global land cover 2000 map (GLC2000) and European CORINE mapping initiative. Since both datasets apply different mapping standards, key for a successful impleme...

Understanding global climate change and developing strategies for sustainable use of our environmental resources are major scientific and political challenges. In response to an announcement of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) for a national Earth observation (EO) mission, the Friedrich-Schiller University Jena and the JenaOptronik GmbH proposed t...