Synthesis Project 6: Scientific foundations of conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystem services

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This project is dedicated to the synthesis of all available information on the conservation of species, habitats and ecosystem services, and on the sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystem services. On species conservation biology, first we will assess the rarity and habitat specificity of species, also making use of 1600 vegetation records and several hundred grasshopper community records. Second, based on rarity, habitat specificity, and land-cover change we will attribute species to degrees of threat and analyse the relationship between degrees of threat and habitat and species characteristics. Third, based on co-occurrence analyses and relationships with environmental variables we will identify umbrella and indicator species, and based on a stakeholder perspective, we will identify flagship species. On ecosystem conservation biology, we will assess the conservation value of natural, disturbed and managed ecosystems, also including perspectives of various conservation stakeholders, analyse the conservation implications of land-cover change, and assess measures of landscape-level conservation value. On sustainable use of species we will combine ethno-botanical and ethno-zoological information on the use of all plant species and on the use of selected animals, with land-cover change information and stakeholder interviews to assess how intense and sustainable the use of these species is. On sustainable use of ecosystems and their services we will define ecosystem-service bundles considering different stakeholder perspectives and we will analyse to which degree they are provided by natural, disturbed and managed ecosystems. Moreover, to understand the relative role of biodiversity for ecosystem services, we will relate ecosystem-service provisioning to habitat characteristics and species composition and diversity. To address the sustainability of ecosystem service use we will involve various stakeholders and their perception on how stable the provision of various ecosystem services is. To achieve our goals, we will use data on plot characteristics and of all taxa and ecosystem processes studied so far. We will employ statistical approaches and, for conservation and ecosystem service value and sustainability, we will also involve stakeholder perspectives.