Thesis

The objective of this PhD thesis was to describe the response of plant and invertebrate communities to alley cropping agroforestry and farming systems (conventional vs organic) and assess both the positive and negative effects of UVS on biodiversity conservation and biological control of weeds and crop pests.

Camille Imbert defended her PhD thesis on the mechanisms governing natural pest control in mixed fruit-tree-vegetable plots in the laboratory Plantes et Systèmes de culture Horticoles (PSH, INRAE, Avignon, France).

Leo Magnin PhD's research analysed how this system operates and revealed means of managing conflicts between environmental protection on the one hand and individual property rights on the other.

The BSc thesis by Quirin Kern was conducted within the "working group Education and Counselling" of the agroforestry campaign "Agroforstkampagne".

There is a lot of potential in agroforestry. Nevertheless, the agricultural sector in Flanders (Belgium) is cautious. In her PhD, Lieve Borremans exposes which barriers have to be eliminated and how we can stimulate the upscaling of agroforestry.

Marc-Robin Lückert designed as his Master thesis at University of Kassel (Witzenhausen) germany a holistic system for sustainable agroforestry in smale scale to demonstrate trendsetting methodes.

The main goal of this PhD research was to analyze and quantify the effect of tree presence on a subset of provisioning, regulating and supporting ecosystem services and biodiversity aspects in a set of silvoarable fields in Belgium.

Sonja Kay's PhD thesis “Assessment of ecosystem services provided by agroforestry systems at the landscape scale” was carried out at Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research (EAER) Agroscope in the Research Division Agroecology and Environment and the Department of Geography at the University of Zurich (Switzerland).