Institute of

LV Rural Studies

Projects "Monitoring, indicators, regional analyses"

Ongoing Projects

AGRUM Germany

The objectives of the EU- Water Framework Directive have not yet been fully achieved in many regions of Germany. This is due in particular to diffuse nutrient inputs from agriculture. "AGRUM-DE", will therefore create a nationwide, consistent method to monitor nitrogen emissions to water bodies. Based on this, measures for better water quality are derived and their impacts will be assessed.

Continuity and Change in Living Conditions in Rural Areas: Explorative Analyses of German Socio-economic Panel (SOEP) data

What new insights into living conditions in rural areas do data from the Socio-Economic Panel, a representative survey of private households in Germany, offer? This question is the focus of a project at the Thünen Institute.

Giving Rural Actors Novel Data and Re-Usable Tools to Lead Public Action in Rural Areas (GRANULAR)

Rural areas in Europe face various demographic, economic, ecological and social challenges. An in-depth understanding of the characteristics and diversity of rural regions is required to address them. The GRANULAR project contributes to this by providing new data and tools for monitoring rural areas. Our focus is on the subjective wellbeing of the population.

How accessible are basic services in different regions?

Currently basic services are concentrated in cities and agglomerations. But does this mean that an under-supply exists in practice?

Monitoring of rural areas in Germany

Depending on the typology applied, rural areas in Germany are home to about 30 to 50 percent of the population. They are characterized by villages and small towns, a great share of agricultural land use and forestry, as well as a relatively low population and settlement density.

The Thünen agricultural atlas

The German agricultural statistics are an important source of information to assess environmental impacts and to estimate agricultural trends. Unfortunately, the access to this information is limited through data protection rules. This was the reason why the project Agraratlas was initialized, to generate a data set at community level on land use and live stocks, without restrictions but fulfilling all data security issues at the same time.

Finished Projects

Building a Typology of European Rural Areas for the Spatial Impact Assessment of Policies

Can rural areas in Europe be allotted to specific types and does such a typification help to better assess the consequences of rural development policies with small-scale economic models?

Climate change at the German Baltic coast- how can agriculture adapt?

As the largest land user in the Baltic Sea region, agriculture is directly affected by climate change. At the same time agricultural production influences nature and the environment, especially by nutrient inputs into waters. We analyse agricultural perspectives and adaptation strategies to climate change in the Baltic Sea region as well as measures to reduce nutrient inputs into waters.

Official statistics shall become more detailed

In Germany, up to now statistical data below the administrative level of the counties or communities is scarce. Therefor we are engaged in developing a high-resolution raster based geo-database for statistical purposes.

Spatial distribution of subsidies to cultural landscapes

How has the preservation of cultural landscapes been supported in the new member states between the years 2000 to 2006?

Spatially differentiated analyses of agricultural water conservation

Diffuse nutrient pollution from agriculture is a major reason that the objectives of the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) for the water quality in many regions of Germany are not expected to be achieved. In various "AGRUM subprojects," we examine measures of agricultural water conservation using an agro-economic and hydrological model network. The main goal is to evaluate how these measures effect on the water quality and what costs are to be expected. The various "AGRUM subprojects" use the same model approaches but differ in terms of study region, runtime and client.

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