Assessing ecosystem service provision from local to landscape scale to improve agricultural productivity and sustainability in Papua New Guinea

如果您的项目必须在NERC研究委员会注册，请完成下面的部分。面对不断增长的全球人口和气候变化，社会最大的全球性挑战之一是实现粮食安全。这种压力与巴布亚新几内亚（PNG）尤其相关，它拥有世界上第三大热带森林面积，85%的人口依靠小规模的自给农业。巴布亚新几内亚农民需要既能提高农业生产力和恢复力，又不会对天然林造成不利影响的解决方案。解决这个问题的一个办法是利用整个农业景观的生态系统服务。该方法包括：(1)对整个农业景观的生态系统服务进行量化；(2)研究如何加强这些生态系统服务以提高农业生产力和可持续性；(3)在景观尺度上研究生态系统服务提供与受益区域之间的时空联系（生态系统流量）；(4)优化土地管理。该项目将使学生能够在热带生态系统中完成原创科学，同时为许多热带国家面临的挑战提供可行的解决方案。

Je-S Paragraph - complete the section below if your project has to be registered with the NERC Research Council One of society's greatest global challenges is to achieve food security in the face of an expanding global population and climate change. Such pressures are particularly relevant to Papua New Guinea (PNG), which has the third largest area of tropical forest worldwide, and where 85% of the population depend on small-scale, subsistence agriculture. PNG farmers need solutions that will increase agricultural productivity and resilience, without detrimentally affecting the natural forest. One solution for tackling this issue is to harness ecosystem services across the agricultural landscape. This approach would involve: (1) Quantifying ecosystem services across the agricultural landscape; (2) Investigating how these ecosystem services could be enhanced to improve agricultural productivity and sustainability; and (3) Investigating spatial and temporal connections (ecosystem flows) between ecosystem service provision and benefiting areas, at the landscape scale; and thus, (4) Optimising land management. This project will enable the student to accomplish original science in a tropical ecosystem, alongside delivering feasible solutions to a challenge faced by many tropical countries.