Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: Understanding and managing the Impacts of Invasive alien species on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services

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Innovative research on the complex interaction of socio-economic and global environmental trends on biodiversity and ecosystem services is needed to help develop more informative scenarios for addressing environmental and human development challenges. To overcome these challenges coupled natural-human systems approaches and analyses are needed. These provide improved scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services that couple the outputs of direct and indirect drivers such as land use, invasive species, overexploitation, biodiversity, environmental change, and pollution. The resulting models provide a methodological state-of-the art that results in more accurate quantitative assessments, better land use, and more effective ecosystem services. Employing this methodology, this research, which is an international coalition between US scientists and those from four European nations, seeks to predict new invasions of terrestrial plants and marine organisms that are linked to climate change in North America and Europe ecosystems. This is important because invasive alien species are significant drivers of species extinction and ecosystem degradation. Thus, their introduction into a new environment, almost always, negatively impacts ecosystem services and human well-being. This research targets climate change as a driver because there is now significant documentation that a large number of species' ranges are shifting in response to warming temperatures. This creates a type of invasion that is different from that caused by physical transportation via anthropological or other means. Prevention and/or containment of new species invasions is the first and most effective stage of invasive species management. However, it is only effective if potential invaders can be identified and prioritized for management before they arrive. Goals of this research are to identify likely terrestrial plan and marine organism species invasions and develop scenarios to prevent them via a participatory process that brings together scientists and stakeholders. Results of the work will include a searchable database of potential invaders and their probable ecological and socio-economic impacts to help managers and policymakers to prioritize high-risk species for intervention. Broader impacts of the work include research that supports proactive regulation and management of problematic alien invasive species, particularly those expected to invade and spread across the United States and Europe, as the climate changes. Broader impacts of the work include international collaboration between the US and France, Germany, Spain, and Switzerland. Each country will fund the component of the work carried out by its scientists. The project has strong societal benefits because invasive species have serious impacts economically and environmentally, as well as in terms of ecosystems and different regions maintaining beneficial biodiversity. Results of the project will help policy makers, industry, and other interested parties better understand possible implications of such invasions and more effectively and efficiently explore possible mitigation practices and policies. The Program notes the project is attentive to gender issues and the impact it has on broadening participation by having a gender-balanced team (4 female and 4 male PIs). It also has a strong transdisciplinary student training component.This award supports US researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a coalition of 26 funding agencies from 23 countries through the Belmont Forum call for proposals on "Scenarios of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services". The call was a multilateral initiative designed to support research projects that contribute to the development of scenarios, models, and decision-support tools for understanding and solving critical issues facing our planet. The goal of the competition was to improve and apply participatory scenario methods to enhance research relevance and its acceptance and to address gaps in methods for modelling impact drivers and policy interventions. It was also to develop and communicate levels of uncertainty associated with the models, to improve data accessibility and fill gaps in knowledge. Using this methodology, this research seeks to understand and anticipate the multi-faceted impacts of invasive alien species on biodiversity and ecosystem services and to provide tools for their management. The US component of this international collaboration focuses on predicting impacts of alien invasive and native range-shifting species. Tasks include the creation of a database of the ecological and socio-economic impacts of 100 terrestrial plants and 250 marine species. Data will be supplemented with additional empirical data from field experiments of high priority, yet presently understudied, invasive aquatic species. The resulting data will be used, in conjunction with an existing international protocol (the Environmental Impact Classification of Alien Taxa; EICAT), to examine the potential impacts of invasive terrestrial plants and marine organisms on native communities, agricultural systems, and human health. The assessment protocol will be adapted to consider both detrimental and beneficial impacts. Spatial planning tools will be used to evaluate the costs and benefits of different management and policy scenarios for preventing and mitigating invasions. Results of the analysis will be used to develop scenarios and models of biodiversity and ecosystem services to inform resource managers and policy makers about possible management of invasive species across multiple ecosystems and geographic scales.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.