BioResilience: Biodiversity resilience and ecosystem services in post-conflict socio-ecological systems in Colombia

该项目将审查哥伦比亚森林生态系统对环境和气候变化的长期适应能力，并增进对森林退化今后对哥伦比亚社会的影响的了解。我们专注于非原始森林，因为它们被当地社区使用，并受到伐木和火灾的影响。这填补了一个研究空白，了解森林，这可能被视为生物“退化”，已经经历了生物多样性的变化，在生态系统服务，以及在他们如何参与当地和全球的碳和能源循环。该项目将通过建立一个跨越森林环境和退化梯度的永久生态监测地块网络来实现这一目标，以便评价生物多样性和衡量火灾、碳储存和气候变化的当前和历史影响等过程，并将这些数据与社会文化研究结合起来，重点是现有的生物多样性保护文化。如果要将科学证据纳入长期管理计划和政策，这种理解是必不可少的，因为哥伦比亚的森林退化与社会生活结构的变化，包括持续冲突的影响密切相关。前瞻性研究和访谈也将使关键利益相关者，特别是当地社区的观点和看法，从一开始就影响我们的研究重点和产出。这项跨学科工作对于执行旨在扭转森林退化影响的生物多样性养护国际框架至关重要。随着哥伦比亚摆脱数十年的冲突，土地使用已经发生了重大变化，例如，在以前因安全问题而无法进入的地区进行种植。我们的成果将扩大到博亚卡和昆迪纳马卡以外的哥伦比亚全国范围和整个热带地区。热带森林退化影响全球约5亿公顷土地，并且是全球碳循环中日益重要的驱动因素。然而，在哥伦比亚，关于变化和从退化中恢复的信息很少;变化发生的时间尺度;变化的主要社会环境驱动因素是什么;以及森林应恢复到什么基线。由于这种高度不确定性，减少毁林和森林退化所致排放量（REDD+）等气候政策对退化的量化很差，结果是全球二氧化碳减排设想可能不够雄心勃勃，地方项目可能无法从碳支付计划中受益。我们提出了一种创新的跨学科方法，将当地知识、生计战略和优先事项纳入与多个生物物理数据来源的对话，以评估变化。我们将用新的实地、社会环境和长期生态数据来补充现有的地块数据，以创建一个独特的长期网络，覆盖博亚卡和昆迪纳马卡的退化森林地块，涵盖退化类型和程度的变化（例如伐木、伐木+焚烧）。我们将进一步利用这些数据与遥感方法来评估森林的时空变化，并评估整个地区的变化驱动因素，为政策，保护和管理提供信息。该项目将提供关键信息，以改进气候和植被模型，帮助评估森林和森林相关农业（例如，咖啡、可可）在面对未来气候变化时将具有弹性。这些信息将用于为政策建议和与一系列利益攸关方共同设计的转型途径提供信息，总之，该项目可以改变对森林生物多样性和生态系统服务控制的理解，确定生态系统对气候和干扰的恢复力，并支持可持续资源利用的社会环境规划。

This project will examine the long-term resilience of Colombian forest ecosystems to environmental and climatic changes and improve understanding of the future implications of forest degradation for Colombian society. We focus on forests that are not pristine in that they are used by local communities and are affected by logging and fire. This fills a research gap in understanding how forests, which may be regarded as biologically 'degraded', have undergone changes in biodiversity, in ecosystem services, and in how they participate in local and global cycles of carbon and energy. The project will achieve this by building a network of permanent ecological monitoring plots across gradients of forest environment and degradation to allow evaluation of biodiversity and measurement of processes such as current and historical effects of fire, and carbon storage and changing climate.This data will be integrated with socio-cultural research, focusing on existing cultures of biodiversity conservation. This understanding is essential if the scientific evidence is to be integrated into long-term management plans and policy, as forest degradation in Colombia is strongly associated with changes to the fabric of social life, including the effects of sustained conflict. Participatory research and interviews will also allow the views and perceptions of key stakeholders, especially local communities, to influence our research priorities and outputs from the beginning. This transdisciplinary work is critical to the implementation of international frameworks for biodiversity conservation aimed at reversing the effects of forest degradation. As Colombia emerges from decades of conflict, substantial changes are already occurring in land use, for example in the cultivation of areas that were previously inaccessible due to security issues. Our results will be scalable beyond the focus of Boyaca and Cundinamarca to the Colombian national scale and across the tropics. Tropical forest degradation affects an estimated 500 million ha globally and is an increasingly important driver in the global carbon cycle. However, in Colombia there is little information about change and recovery from degradation; over what time-scales changes occur; what are the major socio-environmental drivers of change; and to which baseline should forests be restored. Due to this high uncertainty, degradation is poorly quantified by climate policy such as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) with the result that global CO2 emissions-cuts scenarios may not be sufficiently ambitious and local projects may not benefit from carbon payment schemes. We propose an innovative transdisciplinary methodology that will bring local knowledge, livelihood strategies and priorities into dialogue with multiple biophysical data sources, in order to evaluate change. We will supplement our existing plot data with new field, socio-environmental, and long-term ecological data to create a unique long-term network of degraded forest plots across Boyaca and Cundinamarca, covering variation in types and degrees of degradation (e.g. logged, logged+burned). We will, further, use these data with remote sensing approaches to evaluate the spatiotemporal variation in forests and assess drivers of change across the region to inform policy, conservation, and management. The project will provide critical information to improve climate and vegetation models that can help to assess whether forests and forest associated agriculture (e.g., coffee, cacao) will be resilient in the face of future climatic changes. This information will be used to inform policy recommendations and transformation pathways co-designed with a suite of stakeholders.In summary, this project can transform understanding of the controls on forest biodiversity and ecosystem service, determine ecosystem resilience to climate and disturbance, and support socio-environmental planning for sustainable resource use.