Research question and project
Now it is your turn to decide for a self-chosen research question to work on in your final team project.
Designing your research question
Mount Kilimanjaro is a biodiversity rich region. One can find common as well as endemic species in this region. Quantifying and mapping biodiversity as well as supply of Nature’s Contributions to People are increasingly becoming important for designing target oriented policies for conservation and management. The distribution of biodiversity at landscape scale is influenced by multiple environmental factors. Getting such data for mapping is thus aided by combining a set of field and remote sensing data. Upscaling approaches transfer existing information from local to regional scales. Upscaling offers several advantages including spatially variable estimates, lower mis-match between scale and biophysical processes as well as representation of upscaled variable at multiple scales (Le Clec’h, Solen, et al.2018).
In this course, you are encouraged to upscale biodiversity of the Kilimanjaro region. Below you can find some examples for research questions or topics, which you might work on in your final project. You are encouraged to work on self developed research questions for your project!
You project can take data from the following data
- Birds
- Bats
- Insects
- Mammals
- Functional diversity (traits of species for e.g. body mass, beak size, leaf area index, etc.)
- Any other important NCPs like carbon storage
Some papers that can help you get started
Working individually/groups
Please organize your projects individually or in a group of atleast two or four (at max.) people. Each group should have atleast one Physical geography student and one Sustainable development student. In case of a group work, we expect one project and submissions of groups to be larger in the total amount of work compared to individual project.
Project management and implementation
Creativity in research and project management are not incompatible. In fact, professional research requires the definition of some kind of aim or the organization of tasks in time schedules.
Common project management steps are:
- define the research question project and its objectives,
- break down the project into tasks and define a schedule,
- get and prepare the data you need for reaching your objectives
- design workflows for each task and implement them, and last but not least
- adjust your tasks, solve problems and be flexible.
Obviously, it makes sense to start your research project with a short project outline, which should include the project management steps outlined above. Based on your project outline and the feedback we will give you on it, you will realize and submit your final project. More information about the final project and there requirements can be found here.
For more details on project management for scientists, see e.g. the paper of Portny & Austin 2002.