Current Team at UCLouvain
Prof. Dr. Patrick Meyfroidt (P.I.), email
Patrick Meyfroidt holds a PhD in geography (2009) and a degree in sociology from Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) in Belgium. Since 2016 he is Research Associate at the F.R.S-FNRS (the Belgian Research Funds) and Professor at UCLouvain.
His research focuses on how land use and more broadly land systems can contribute to sustainability.
His main research interests are land use transitions, i.e. non-linear land use dynamics at broad scale such as forest transitions and emergence of land use frontiers; linkages between globalization and land use including supply chain interventions to halt deforestation; theories of land system change; and social-ecological feedbacks.
His recent projects include the MIDLAND project (ERC Starting Grant) investigating emerging agricultural and forestry frontiers in Mozambique and Southern Africa; the SUSTAIN-COCOA project researching cocoa supply chains, deforestation and sustainability in West Africa; the COUPLED project investigating telecouplings and sustainability issues; and participations to the Trase initiative.
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Dr. Andrea S. Garcia (Postdoctoral researcher) email
Andrea is a postdoctoral researcher and data scientist in the do Pasto ao Prato initiative (UCLouvain, TRASE) working on the beef supply chain and its impacts. She is a scientist with interdisciplinary training in applied ecology from the Center for Nuclear Energy in Agriculture at the University of São Paulo. Her expertise is focused on data analysis, GIS, and remote sensing in the assessment of natural and agricultural environments. The interdisciplinary context of her work is centered around the dynamics of land cover and land use change – the effects of economic dynamics, public and private regulation, and impact assessment of interventions; mapping and evaluation of ecosystem services; implementation of monitoring, reporting, and verification system and its integration with different business models.
Dr. Valentin Guye (Postdoctoral researcher)
Valentin is a postdoctoral researcher on the SUSTAIN-COCOA project and with the Trase initiative. His research focuses on cocoa production in West Africa. He maintains data and models of cocoa supply chains, to map and assess the impacts of sustainability interventions therein. He has a special interest in causality and spillovers, which he primarily studies with spatial and reduced-form econometrics in quasi-experimental frameworks.
Valentin received a training in economics in France and obtained his PhD in cotutelle from Université Paris Saclay and from Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. During his doctoral studies, he was supervised by Raja Chakir at the Paris Saclay Applied Economics research unit, and by Sabine Fuss and Nicolas Koch at the Mercator Research Institute for Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC). Valentin has worked on the economics of palm oil deforestation in Indonesia and of pan-tropical indirect land use change, as well as on the food security effects of biofuel policy.
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Cécile Renier (PhD student, 2021 – present), email
Cécile is a land system scientist with a degree in bioengineering (2013) from UCLouvain in Belgium and in environmental policies (2014) from AgroParisTech in France. After 5 years in cooperation – working on sustainable supply chains and biodiversity conservation, she is currently a doctoral researcher at the Earth and Life Institute at UCLouvain on the SUSTAIN-COCOA project and with the Trase initiative. Her research focuses on land use change linked to agriculture, particularly cocoa in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, and global sustainability targets.
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Dr. Philippe Rufin (Postdoctoral researcher), email
Philippe is a Geographer with strong interest in land systems and remote sensing. His work involves the development and application of tools and methods for large-area mapping of land use and land use intensity across decadal time frames. Currently, Philippe works on mapping the dynamics of cropland, field size, and land use intensity in Sub-Saharan Africa using deep learning and very high spatial resolution satellite imagery. The outcomes of his work will contribute to identifying and understanding recent trajectories of agricultural expansion and intensification in Northern Mozambique. He is supported by a research grant from the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique F.R.S.-FNRS. For more information and recent updates, feel free to visit https://philipperufin.github.io/.
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Dr. Angela Kronenburg García (Postdoctoral researcher), email
Angela Kronenburg García studied cultural anthropology at Leiden University and completed her PhD at Wageningen University in 2015. Her thesis was on land tenure transformation, forest conflicts and leadership among the agro-pastoral Loita Maasai in Kenya. She has worked as a teaching assistant at Leiden University, as a postdoc researcher at the African Studies Centre Leiden and at Utrecht University she was involved in a research project on land governance, inclusive business and food security in Mozambique. Angela has also done consultancy work in Kenya and in the Netherlands on gender, land governance and food security.
Angela contributed to step one of the MIDLAND project. Her research seeks to understand the strategies, decisions and coalitions of actors in the emerging agricultural frontier of northern Mozambique. She is based in Maputo, Mozambique. Angela is currently supported by a research grant from the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique F.R.S.-FNRS.
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Dr. Erasmus zu Ermgassen (Postdoctoral researcher)
Erasmus is a scientist at UCLouvain working with Trase to improve the transparency and sustainability of supply chains for products such as beef, soy, and cocoa.
A qualified veterinarian and big data scientist, Erasmus studies the global food system by combining data and insights from agriculture, supply chains, economics, life cycle assessment (LCA), and spatial analysis. Erasmus has a PhD on sustainable livestock from the University of Cambridge, UK. Erasmus co-founded and leads the do Pasto ao Prato initiative.
For more details, please see https://erasmuszu.weebly.com/
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Former team members at UCLouvain
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Dr. Michelle Picoli (Postdoctoral researcher), email
Michelle Picoli is a Statistician with a MSc in Remote Sensing at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and a PhD in Agricultural Engineering at the University of Campinas, Brazil. Her research focuses on land use mapping and monitoring, statistical analysis of spatio-temporal data and big earth observation data to address challenges related to land use change and environmental impacts.
In the MIDLAND project, Michelle focuses on remote sensing mapping of field size dynamics and mapping smallholder versus large-scale cropland dynamics in Northern Mozambique. Her work provide data about rates and spatial patterns of dynamics linked to farm and field size.
Michelle also contributes to the LULCC Impact of the Sorghum and Millet Upscaling Project in Mali, project on impact assessment of food crop intensification program on tree cover in Sikasso region, Mali.
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Dr. Cristina Chiarella (Postdoctoral researcher), email
Cristina’s research lies in the intersections of agricultural economics and geography. She holds a PhD in Geography and a MSc in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Davis; and a BA in Economics from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Her dissertation studied the consequences of climate change in the Dry Corridor of Honduras on crop losses by invasive species and migration. Cristina has previous research experience at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), The World Bank and at California’s Cooperative Extension, in projects related to agricultural productivity and food security.
Cristina contributes to the MIDLAND project by researching the tradeoffs between agricultural productivity and labor demand for small, medium, and large-scale farms in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her research also contributes to characterize such tradeoffs for alternative farming systems.
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Dr. Mark Zingbagba ( (Postdoctoral researcher)
Postdoctoral researcher on the the SUSTAIN-COCOA project and with the Trase initiative.
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Dr. Mathil Vandromme (Postdoctoral researcher, 2020-2021)
Mathil worked as a cocoa supply chain researcher, on a project for Trase. Mathil focussed specifically on the cocoa supply chain of Côte d’Ivoire, using a miriad of publicly available data to reconstruct sourcing patterns of major cocoa traders and processors, and to link this to socio-ecological indicators.
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Dr. Tiago Reis (PhD student, 2018-2021)
PhD thesis on “Understanding geographic trade stickiness to improve the sustainability of global commodity supply chains” (co-supervision with Prof. T. Kuemmerle, as part of the COUPLED MSCA-ITN project).
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Dr. Dilini Abeygunawardane (Postdoctoral researcher)
Dilini has a background in ecology, natural resource management, and agricultural development policy. She holds a PhD in environmental management from The University of Queensland, Australia (2014). Before joining the MIDLAND team, Dilini did consultancy work for the CGIAR research centers IWMI and WorldFish undertaking projects in research monitoring and evaluation, institutional and policy analysis, and developing decision support systems.
In the MIDLAND project, Dilini focuses on transnational investment decisions in agriculture and forestry across emerging agricultural frontiers, with a specific focus on Southern and Eastern Africa. Her work will contribute to understanding how and why investors choose to move across national borders, potentially driving emerging frontiers and whether these decisions compose of and or justify the conditions hypothesized to drive frontier emergence.
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Dr. Adia Bey (PhD student)
Adia Bey is a geospatial analyst with a background in forest monitoring, cultural heritage mapping and the use of GIS to support humanitarian relief work. After earning a BA in Anthropology at Columbia University and a MSc in Environmental Change and Management at Oxford University, Adia has worked on projects in over 20 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America with indigenous communities, NGOs, national governments and UN agencies.
Adia did her doctoral research with the MIDLAND project over 2016-2021. Her research aims are to map 30-years of land use change in northern Mozambique; to draw upon the interdisciplinary research of the MIDLANDS team to identify agent-specific pathways of land use change; and to measure the impacts of these land use changes on food security and carbon stocks.
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Dr. Virginia Rodríguez García (PhD student)
Virginia Rodríguez García holds a B.Sc. in Environmental Sciences from the University of Salamanca (Spain) and a M.Sc. in Agriculture and Bio-industries from the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium) and a M.Sc. in Agricultural and Food Economics from the University of Bonn (Germany). During her MA thesis, she analyzed the impact of coffee certification on the Bonga forest in Ethiopia where she did a fieldwork.
Virginia did her doctoral research with the MIDLAND project over 2016-2021. She contributes to step 2 by developing and testing theories to explain how do land use dynamics generate land use displacement and leakage, and when does land use displacement result in intensification versus expansion of land use.
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Dr. Eduardo Oliveira (Postdoctoral researcher)
Eduardo has a background in geography, strategic management and strategic spatial planning. He holds a PhD in spatial sciences from The University of Groningen, The Netherlands (2016). Before joining the MIDLAND team, Eduardo was a postdoctoral researcher at the Land Change Science research unit of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL in Switzerland. At WSL he did research on the territorial governance arrangements influencing processes of strategic spatial plan-making and plan-implementation at the urban regional level. He also did various systematic literature reviews of the digital transformation and landscape research and the topic of land degradation in strategic spatial planning.
In the MIDLAND project, Eduardo focuses on the governance of land and food systems and their sustainability in emerging land use frontiers, with a specific focus on northern Mozambique. His work will contribute to understanding the effectiveness of a trans-scalar strategic land use planning process by bringing together public and private actors, which are actors living and developing their activities far from the focal area and those actors living in and around the area influencing the governance and resilience of land systems.
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Dr. Isaline Jadin (PhD student, 2012-2016)
PhD thesis on “Land use displacement and forest conservation: The cases of Bhutan and Costa Rica”, UCLouvain (co-supervision with E.F. Lambin).
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Dr. Derek Bruggeman (PhD student, 2010-2016)
PhD thesis on “Impacts of national-scale land use zoning policies on forest cover changes in Cameroon and Bhutan”, UCLouvain (co-supervision with E.F. Lambin).
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Invited researchers and researchers co-supervised by Prof. Patrick Meyfroidt outside UCLouvain
Marie Pratzer (PhD student, 2022 – present)
PhD thesis on “Social-ecological complexity of land and people: Integrating the diversity of land-use activities and actors into conservation for the tropical dry forests”, Humboldt University in Berlin (co-supervision with Prof. T. Kuemmerle)
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Ana Buchadas (PhD student, 2019 – present)
PhD thesis on “Understanding agricultural frontiers in the world’s tropical dry forests”, Humboldt University in Berlin (co-supervision with Prof. T. Kuemmerle)
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Claudia Parra Paitan (PhD student, 2018 – present, co-supervisor since 2022)
PhD thesis on “Environmental impact assessments in a telecoupled world”, VU Amsterdam, (co-supervision with Prof. P. H. Verburg, as part of the COUPLED MSCA-ITN project).
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Johanna Coenen (PhD student, 2019 – present)
PhD thesis on “Governance Institutions for Sustainability in Globally Telecoupled Systems”, Leuphana University, (co-supervision with Prof. J. Newig, as part of the COUPLED MSCA-ITN project).
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Dr. Siyu Qin (PhD student, 2018 – 2023)
PhD thesis on “Understanding Conservation Telecoupling”, Humboldt University in Berlin (co-supervision with Prof. T. Kuemmerle, as part of the COUPLED MSCA-ITN project).
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Dr. Manan Bhan (PhD student, 2018-2022)
PhD thesis on “Quantifying, mapping and assessing the impacts of land use on global biomass carbon stocks”, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Vienna (co-supervision with Profs. Karlheinz Erb and Simone Gingrich)
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MIDLAND team at Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (UEM, Mozambique)
Prof. Dr. Almeida Sitoe, email
Almeida Sitoe holds a PhD degree in Forest Science (2000). He is currently Full Professor of Silviculture and Ecology of Tropical Forests at Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique. His main research interest is forest dynamics, with emphasis on ecological and human processes, impacts on the ecosystems conditions and functions. Current projects include evaluation of changes in forest plant species composition and diversity, biomass and carbon stocks associated with forest cover change, potential for reduction of carbon emission from deforestation and forest degradation.
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Prof. Dr. Luis Artur, email
Luis Artur, Mozambican, holds a PhD in Sociology of Disasters, a MSc in Rural Development Sociology and a BSc in Agronomy. His current position is lecturer and researcher at Eduardo Mondlane university in Maputo, Mozambique. Artur has published internationally and nationally in books, journals and newspapers. Luis Artur has an extensive experience having been able to produce training material on (participatory) rural development, agriculture, climate change and disaster risk reduction. He has also supervised more than 30 BSc and MSc thesis. Current tasks includes framing the social aspects of environmental changes, integration of climate change adaptation in the national planning, the development of local plans of adaptation and the formulation of M&E system for climate change adaptation.
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Prof. Dr. Natasha Ribeiro, email
Natasha S. Ribeiro, was born and raised in Maputo, Mozambique on August 24th 1971. She holds a bachelors degree in Forest Engineering from the Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM) in Mozambique, a MSc. in Management and Conservation of Biodiversity from the Centro Agronomico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) in Costa Rica and a PhD in Environmental Sciences from the University of Virginia (UVa) in the USA. Natasha has more than 20 years of professional experience in teaching, researching and extension in the field of forestry and forest fires ecology. She lectures Environmental Impact Assessment and Restoration Ecology at UEM and Ecosystem Services at the Technical University of Lisbon (PhD level). In research, Natasha has initiated a long-term fire-related research program in the Niassa National Reserve, one of the most important conservation areas in the country. The program has produced key results that are being used to update its management plan. She has been also coordinated other research activities throughout the country such as: forest ecosystem services and biodiversity assessments. Natasha has been appointed the coordinator of key missions in the country such as: the National Strategy and Action Plan for Biodiversity Conservation (NBSAP) and the design of EU Biodiversity Conservation Program for Mozambique. She was appointed to coordinate a EUMETcast receiving antenna hosted by UEM in the context of the regional project “Monitoring of the Environment for Security in Africa”. She is the regional coordinator of the Miombo Network of southern Africa. Natasha has received two awards during her academic years namely: the best bachelors student in Forest Engineering and the conservation award from the Department of Environmental Sciences, Uva as a PhD student. The Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program will contribute to enhance her capacities to conduct/coordinate research and expand partnerships in the USA, which may result in concrete follow-up research actions. After completion of the exchange program, Natasha will use the experience to improve teaching and research methods in her institution contributing to its vision of being a university of reference nationally and internationally. She will also use the experience to improve the contribution of the Miombo Network to bridge the gap between science and policy making in the southern Africa.
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Arsénio Jorge
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Sá Nogueira Lisboa, email
Sá Nogueira Lisboa holds a B.Sc. in Forest Engineering and M.Sc. in Management and Conservation of Biodiversity from the Eduardo Mondlane University (EMU), Mozambique. In his B.Sc. thesis, he developed aboveground biomass allometric equation for Moist Forest in Central Mozambique. Modelling of spatial variability of soil organic carbon and soil total nitrogen in mopane woodland in south of Mozambique was covered in his Master thesis. At the moment he is an assistant lecturer under supervision of Prof. Dr. Almeida Sitoe, at EMU, Maputo.
Sá Nogueira has over 5 years of experience in forest management and ecosystem services, and he has been involved in several research projects in Mozambique. In the last three years he has been working as research assistant of ACES project.
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Milton Tovele (Master student), email
Milton George Low Tovele (1992) is a master’s student in Rural Development at Eduardo Mondlane University. He has a degree in Agricultural Sciences from the Faculty of Agriculture of the Catholic University of Mozambique, Cuamba, Niassa. For his B.Sc. thesis, he developed a Variety Test: Adaptability of Four Forage Varieties. He also graduated as a medium agricultural and livestock technician from the Agrarian Institute of Boane, Maputo. For his B.Sc. thesis, he also developed Variety Test: Susceptibility and Resistance to Mite in Horticulture.
Milton contributes to the MIDLAND project with his M.Sc. research, which is titled Land use competition in Mecuburi district: challenges and opportunities for forest conservation and rural development.
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Julieta Jetimane (Master student), email
Julieta Lurdes Jetimane was born on 9th July of 1991, and is a student of master degree in Management and Conservation of Biodiversity at Eduardo Mondlane University. With a degree in Forestry Engineering at the same University. In her B. Sc. Thesis, she developed about floristic composition and aerial biomass estimation of the Afzelia quanzensis species in Southern Mozambique. Has 2 years of experience as a monitor in the fields of Forest Exploration and Plant Physiology, Forest Engineering and Agronomy courses respectively. At the moment she is working with environment projects. Julieta has 3 years of experience working with projects related to environmnent, data processing and analysis of data using GIS (Geographic Information System).
Land Systems for Sustainability Lab 