Bianca Drepper

Background

About Bianca Drepper

In the past years I had the chance to work in very diverse environments and got to engage with stakeholders from different industries, cultures and types of knowledge. I like to see myself as a bridge between institutes, user groups, researchers and citizens and like to facilitate communication across disciplines and interests. With my educational and professional background I strive to contribute to a collective effort on improving the resilience and sustainability of our society, especially in the domain of environment and agriculture. I love to travel long distances by bike and when I roll between fields, orchards or meadows I get reminded of the big impact agriculture has on our environment and landscape - but also on how vulnerable the sector is to meteorological hazards. I experienced the challenges of severe drought on smallholder agriculture first-hand in Portugal and in Belgium. My PhD in a nutshell : I calibrated and apply dynamic models on temperature time series to asses frost risks during flowering of apple and pear trees in Belgium. Although I found destructive frosts to occur less frequently during the next 50 years, they remain a challenge for the fruit sector. Therefor I conduct a systematic review on frost prevention strategies to gain objective and up-to-date insights in which strategies to apply where and under which conditions.