Hannah Burger
Presentation
I am a PhD student analysing the effectiveness of area-protection in an age of climate and land-use change for both Sweden and Great Britain. I use a mix of data from long-term monitoring schemes, citizen science data, museum specimens and national climate and land-cover maps. I analyse this in a Before-After Control-Impact (BACI) framework, meaning I compare protected areas with unprotected areas, both before and after they became protected.
Before my PhD, I studied biodiversity and associated ecosystem functioning, such as pest control and herbivory, along an environmental and management gradient.
Research
In my PhD project, to assess the effectiveness of area-protection, I'm studying if protected areas (1) protect against habitat loss, (2) protect against local extinctions of birds, butterflies and plants and (3) facilitate colonisation of range-shifting species of birds, butterflies and plants.
I am interested in which role climate change and land-use change play in how effective area-protection is and in the differences between Sweden and Great Britain in this context.
Aside from my PhD project, I am also involved in the “Trees of the tundra” monitoring project from LUVRE, in Vindelfjällen in northern Sweden. Here since 2019, we have been studying changes in the tree line, snow cover and species composition of bumblebees.
Teaching
I really enjoy teaching and have been helping out on university courses in biology since 2017. Now at SLU, I help out on the following courses:
- BI1399 Ekologi & Miljö
- BI1251 Organismvärlden
- BI1322 Soil Biochemistry and Biology
- BI1419 Träd och skogsekologi
- BI1277 Vertebratzoologi
I am also currently looking for a master student to supervise their thesis project about “People’s perceptions to area-protection and its effectiveness”. If you are interested in writing your thesis about this topic, pleas do not hesitate to reach out!
Publications
A. J. M. Tack, Burger, H. F., Wood, H., Zewdie, B., Shimales, T., Ayalew, B., Mendesil, E., & Hylander, K. (in review) The diversity and role of birds and bats and trade-offs with yield in coffee agroforests in Arabica coffee’s native range.
Burger, H. F., Hylander, K., Ayalew, B., van Dam, N. M., Mendesil, E., Schedl, A., ... & Tack, A. J. (2022). Bottom-up and top-down drivers of herbivory on Arabica coffee along an environmental and management gradient. Basic and Applied Ecology, 59, 21-32.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.baae.2021.12.009
Burger, H. F., Vondráčková, K., Skłodowski, M., Koid, Q., Dent, D. H., Wallace, K., & Fayle, T. M. (2021) Protection from herbivores varies between ant genera for the myrmecophilic plant Leea aculeata in Malaysian Borneo. Asian Myrmecology 14: e014001 (1-16).