ZALF
The ZALF is a national research facility with about 300 employees dedicated to the integrated system analysis of agricultural landscapes for sustainable management of land and water, conservation of natural resources, sustainable development of rural areas. The methodological approaches encompass the investigation of natural and societal processes on different spatial and temporal scales, mathematical modeling, scenario analysis and elaboration of decision support systems. Within the Institute of socio-economics, the Department'Land use change and rural development policy' focuses on policy support, particularly the evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of instruments for controlling sustainable landscape use and rural development. Key research activities are the analysis of land use change, preferences and interdependencies in the urban/rural context, the development of strategies to avoid resource and use conflicts, investigations on implementation behavior and targeting of rural development policies, scenario studies for policy impact assessment, and the development of tools for multi-level policy decision support.
Description of the principal personnel
involved with their relevant experience
Annette Piorr is a senior researcher, holding a Ph.D. in agricultural science from the University of Bonn. She is Head of the Department for Land use change and Rural Development Policies within the ZALF Institute of socio-economics. Her scientific expertise addresses policy oriented research, multifunctional agriculture,
land use change, indicator development, impact assessment and evaluation, participatory research, urban-rural relationships and urban agriculture. She has research and coordination experience from several national and EU-research projects (e.g. GRANO, MEA-Scope, PLUREL, CAP-IRE, INNSULA) and is coordinator of the FP7 project SPARD.
Ingo Zasada holds a Diploma in urban and regional planning and is completing a PhD at ZALF and the Centre of Life and Food Sciences Weihenstephan, Technical University Munich, Germany. Ingo's PhD focuses on the topic of agriculture in peri-urban areas of European Metropolitan regions, covering an empirical analysis of land use dynamics and conceptual work on multifunctional development strategies. His research is closely linked with the FP6 IP PLUREL (Peri-urban land use relationships) and the FP7 project SPARD. Derived from a pan-European modeling approach, agricultural and landscape responses to urban growth have been developed.