Reconciling food security and biodiversity conservation: an integrative modelling approach

协调粮食安全和生物多样性保护：综合建模方法

• 批准号: 2441007
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Aberdeen
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2441007
• 关键词: Reconciling; food; security; biodiversity; conservation

Perhaps the single greatest societal challenge of the coming decades will be to develop approaches that enable us to sustainably feed the World's growing human population. However, delivering food security will inevitably pose major challenges and one key issue is how can a substantially increased global food production be delivered without major negative impacts on biodiversity1? In this project, the student will work with World-leading groups in ecological modelling (at Aberdeen) and in land-use modelling (at Edinburgh) to develop an integrated modelling approach that enables alternative land-use futures to be assessed in terms of their likely impacts on biodiversity at a range of spatial scales. Importantly, the project will allow the student to focus on two key groups of organisms, pollinators and crop pests, to explore how changing land-use may impact their spatial dynamics, with likely feedbacks on crop productivity and subsequent land-use decisions. Improving the forecast for biodiversity under climate change is a major challenge for ecologists2. We need to predict how climate change will alter biodiversity to assess the impacts of alternative land-use and climate change scenarios and guide plans for preventing serious damage to the biosphere. Many ecological models have been developed to understand climate change impacts, but these have a number of failings. A major omission in current models is that they ignore the changing spatial patterns of land-use and the impact that these will have, at different spatial scales, on biodiversity responses. The Travis group at Aberdeen are field leaders in developing mechanistic approaches for forecasting biodiversity responses to changing land-use and climate scenarios, recently publishing the software, RangeShifter. The group at Edinburgh have complementary expertise, being internationally recognised for land use and food security research and modelling3, with published models operating from local to national and global scales (e.g. Aporia, CRAFTY and PLUM). Integrating land-use and ecological models will provide a novel means for exploring the potentially complex and dynamic interplay between ecological responses and land-use patterns. The Burslem group (Aberdeen) studies both natural forest systems (in temperate and tropical regions) as well as interactions between them and agroforestry. This will provide opportunities for field work in temperate and/or tropical systems to collect data for the modelling.The student will be provided with training in the development and application of individual and agent based models in order that they gain the skills to make joint use of the approaches to address some key questions related to the interactions between agricultural intensification or expansion, and biodiversity dynamics. The student will be provided with considerable scope to steer the exact direction of the project within the broad remit but we anticipate the following sets of questions being likely priorities:1. To what degree will future land-use change, driven largely by agricultural intensification and expansion, reduce the ability of species' to track changing climate? 2. What are the likely impacts of changing agricultural practice on the prevalence and impact of different crop pests? 3. How will changing patterns of agricultural practice influence the regional persistence of pollinators? References:1Butsic V, Kuemmerle T. 2015. Using optimization methods to align food production and biodiversity conservation beyond land sharing and land sparing. Ecological Applications 25: 589-595.2Urban MC, 20 authors, Travis JMJ. 2016. Improving the forecast for biodiversity under climate change. Science, in press.(to be published 9th September)3Alexander P, et al. 2016. Assessing uncertainties in landcover projections. Global Change Biology, online early (DOI: 10.1111/gcb.13447).

也许未来几十年最大的社会挑战将是找到方法，使我们能够可持续地养活世界上不断增长的人口。然而，实现粮食安全将不可避免地带来重大挑战，其中一个关键问题是，如何在不对生物多样性产生重大负面影响的情况下实现大幅增加的全球粮食生产？在这个项目中，学生将与世界领先的生态建模（阿伯丁）和土地利用建模（爱丁堡）团队合作，开发一种综合建模方法，使替代土地利用的未来能够在一系列空间尺度上对生物多样性的可能影响进行评估。重要的是，该项目将使学生专注于两个关键的生物群体，传粉媒介和作物害虫，探索土地利用变化如何影响它们的空间动态，并可能对作物生产力和随后的土地利用决策产生反馈。改善气候变化下生物多样性的预测是生态学家面临的主要挑战。我们需要预测气候变化将如何改变生物多样性，以评估替代土地利用和气候变化情景的影响，并指导防止对生物圈造成严重破坏的计划。人们开发了许多生态模型来理解气候变化的影响，但这些模型存在许多缺陷。当前模式的一个主要缺失是，它们忽略了土地利用空间格局的变化及其在不同空间尺度上对生物多样性响应的影响。阿伯丁的特拉维斯小组在开发预测生物多样性对土地利用和气候变化的反应的机械方法方面处于领先地位，最近发布了rangeshiter软件。爱丁堡大学的研究小组拥有互补的专业知识，在土地利用和粮食安全研究和建模方面得到国际认可，并发表了从地方到国家和全球范围的模型（例如Aporia， CRAFTY和PLUM）。整合土地利用和生态模型将为探索生态反应和土地利用模式之间潜在的复杂和动态的相互作用提供一种新的手段。伯斯勒姆小组（阿伯丁）研究自然森林系统（在温带和热带地区）以及它们与农林业之间的相互作用。这将为温带和/或热带系统的实地工作提供机会，为建模收集数据。本课程将为学生提供发展和应用个体模型和主体模型的培训，使他们能够联合使用这些方法来解决与农业集约化或扩张与生物多样性动态之间相互作用有关的一些关键问题。学生将有相当大的空间在广泛的职权范围内引导项目的确切方向，但我们预计以下几组问题可能是优先考虑的：在农业集约化和扩张的驱动下，未来土地利用的变化将在多大程度上降低物种追踪气候变化的能力？2. 改变农业实践对不同作物害虫的流行和影响可能产生什么影响？3. 农业实践模式的变化将如何影响传粉媒介的区域持久性？参考文献：1Butsic V， Kuemmerle T. 2015。利用优化方法使粮食生产和生物多样性保护在土地共享和土地节约之外保持一致。生态学报，25(5):589- 592。2016. 改进气候变化下的生物多样性预测。科学，出版中。3Alexander P, et al. 2016。评估土地覆盖预估的不确定性。全球变化生物学，早期在线（DOI: 10.1111/gcb.13447）。