MSc Thesis at Soil Geography & Landscape

Thesis coordinator

If you consider doing your MSc thesis with the Soil Geography & Landscape group, please make an appointment with the MSc thesis coordinator Liz Chamberlain. This webpage serves as a first orientation prior to meeting the coordinator.

dr. EL (Liz) Chamberlain
Contact MEE-D MSc theses

MSc thesis ring

The SGL MSc thesis ring supports writing your thesis. Here, you submit drafts of your own work for review, give comments on fellow students’ drafts, and synthesize a short portfolio reflecting on the learning experience.

dr. IM (Ingrid) Lubbers
Thesis ring coordinator and first point of contact

MSc Thesis topics

At the Soil Geography and Landscape group we offer a list of possible MSc thesis topics. However, we encourage you to design your own thesis topic together with your supervisor of choice. For inspiration, below we present general descriptions of a thesis for each of the three suggested learning paths of the Soil Geography and Earth Surface Dynamics specialisation:

Thesis Earth Surface Dynamics

You will investigate changes at the earth surface, resulting from natural and/or human influences. Subjects include erosion and sedimentation, archaeology, urban soils, land subsidence in deltas, bog developments. Your project will often include fieldwork and mapping, followed by laboratory work (e.g. luminescence dating) and analysis, or modelling (e.g. landscape evolution modelling using LAPSUS). Potential supervisors include (along with field of expertise in this context):

Thesis Sustainable Land Use

You will investigate nature-based solution approaches for sustainable land-use. Subjects include: multi-functional land evaluation, soil and landscape resilience, soil biodiversity, rewilding, agriculture and carbon sequestration. With all those topics, the focus is primary on landscape scale, and research topic usually include interactions and feedbacks of natural processes and human/societal actors. Typically a thesis includes fieldwork, and perhaps also interviewing stakeholders, followed by data analysis. Potential supervisors include (along with field of expertise in this context):

Thesis Soil Geography and Data Science

You will work with data and related models that have a spatial and/or temporal component and are usually soil or landscape related. Examples of thesis topics are conventional and digital soil mapping, statistical validation of soil maps, remote and proximal sensing, soil monitoring and spatial sampling design, pedotransfer functions, big data applications, urban soils, machine learning and spatial interpolation. Potential supervisors include (along with field of expertise in this context):