People, forest use and biodiversity on islands: models for global sustainability

该奖学金将侧重于环境和社会因素的反馈和权衡，以及它们如何相互作用，以塑造小岛屿独特的地理和生物多样性。特别是，学生将采取跨学科的方法来了解森林，生物多样性和社会之间的联系如何在时间和空间上变化，评估人们对森林资源的依赖程度不同（例如农村居民与城市居民）的作用，并考虑到森林的特征，如结构，功能和生物多样性。虽然每个岛国都是独一无二的，但该奖学金将以圣多美和普林西比岛国为基地，确定可能与全球相关的模式。圣多美和普林西比是非洲第二小的国家，在联合国人类发展指数中排名第142位。该国近90%的土地被森林覆盖，其中约四分之一是本土的。其生物多样性在全球范围内的重要性早已得到承认，主要是由于大量的地方病，超过了“海报儿童”生物多样性岛屿系统，如毛里求斯和加拉帕戈斯群岛。尽管如此，我们仍然对特有物种的种群、分布和生态或森林结构和功能知之甚少，根据兴趣，学生可以考虑以下任何或所有主题：（i）森林对社会压力的适应能力，包括历史和季节性时间因素（ii）量化土地利用和城市化梯度中森林的使用、偏好和价值（iii）情景和全球影响。了解过去和现在是预测未来的先决条件，如果要保护圣多美和普林西比独特的生物多样性和森林生态系统，就必须了解该岛未来可能出现的情况。一些生物多样性数据集，沿着土地利用和农业生产的历史资料存在圣多美和普林西比在地理信息系统，但学生将有机会扩展这些，例如通过建立在现有的高质量的鸟类数据集与其他分类组。学生同样可以专注于森林类型/本地和引进树种的梯度的森林结构和功能。同样，增加关于森林类型、结构和变化的最新遥感数据将是对现有知识库的宝贵扩充，如果需要，该奖学金将有大量机会进行实地考察，经费由NERC DTP研究津贴提供。在实地工作期间，学生将与里卡多·利马博士及其团队以及来自ECOFAC和Associação Monte皮科的经验丰富、知识渊博的当地森林和生物多样性专家密切合作。

The studentship will focus on the feedbacks and trade-offs across environmental and societal factors and how they interact to both shape, and be shaped by, the unique geography and biodiversity of small islands. In particular, the studentship will take an interdisciplinary approach to understand how the links between forests, biodiversity and society vary in time and space, assessing the role of people with varying dependencies on forest resources (e.g. rural dwellers vs urban residents) and taking into account forest traits such as structure, function and biodiversity. While each island state is unique, the studentship will be based in the island nation of São Tomé and Principe, identifying patterns that might be relevant globally. São Tomé and Principe is the second smallest country in Africa, and lies 142nd on the United Nation's Human Development Index. Almost 90% of the country is forested and around a quarter of this is native. The importance of its biodiversity in the global context has long been recognised, mostly due to the high number of endemics, which outstrip "poster-child" biodiverse island systems such as Mauritius, and the Galapagos Islands. Despite this, we still know little about the populations, distribution and ecology of the endemic species or forest structure and function.Depending on interests, the studentship could consider any or all of the following topics:(i) Forest resilience to societal pressures, including historical and seasonal temporal elements(ii) Quantifying the use of, preferences for and values associated with forests across a land use and urbanisation gradient (iii) Scenarios and global implications. Understanding the past and present can be pre-requisites for projecting into the future, and if São Tomé and Principe's unique biodiversity and forest ecosystems are to be conserved, an awareness of likely future scenarios for the island will be essential. Some biodiversity datasets, along with historical material on land use and agricultural production exist for São Tomé and Principe within GIS, but the student will have the opportunity to extend these, for instance by building on the existing high quality avian datasets with additional taxonomic groups. The student could equally focus on forest structure and function across gradients of forest type/native and introduced tree species. Similarly, the addition of more recent remote sensed data on forest type, structure and change will be a valuable extension to the current knowledge base.If desired, the studentship will have substantial opportunities for fieldwork, funded through the NERC DTP research allowance. During their time in the field the student would be working closely with Dr Ricardo Lima and his team, as well as experienced and knowledgeable local forest and biodiversity experts from ECOFAC and Associação Monte Pico.