Computational tools for modelling global ecological change impacts and adaptations in forest ecosystems

全球生态变化和/或其缓解对森林生态系统的结构和动态产生了意想不到的影响，但是，对各种压力如何与干扰机制相互作用以影响这些指标的理解是未知的。这种相互作用可以产生各种影响-从改变树木生长率到物种生态位扩大，再到改变镶嵌生态系统中的其他稳定状态-反过来又可以极大地改变我们在地方和区域一级管理和养护森林生态系统的方向。 在全球范围内，不断增长的人口对我们维持人道生计和环境完整性的能力造成了前所未有的压力。人类主导的生态系统在历史上和近代的崩溃表明，我们没有很好地了解人类-环境耦合系统，因此，可持续发展的途径在很大程度上仍然是未知的。例如，森林保护与土地节约和农业产量密切相关。我们认为，使用计算密集型模型开发的场景捕捉的方式，分析方法不能复杂，揭示可能性，以帮助指导适应战略，以避免未来不愉快的“惊喜”。

Global ecological change and/or its mitigation are having unexpected effects on forest ecosystem structure and dynamics, however an understanding of how various stressors interact with disturbance regimes to affect such indicators is unknown. Such interactions can have a variety of effects -- from changing tree growth rates to species niche expansion to flipping of alternative stable states in mosaic ecosystems -- and can in turn dramatically change our directions for management and conservation of forest ecosystems at local and regional scales. At global scales increasing human population has created unprecedented pressure on our ability to sustain humane livelihoods as well as the integrity of our environments. The collapse of human-dominated ecosystems in historical and recent times suggests that we do not have a good understanding of human-environment coupled systems, and thus the pathways to sustainability are still largely uncharted. Forest conservation, for example, is intimately linked with things like land sparing and agricultural yield. We argue that scenarios developed using computationally intensive models capture complexity in ways that that analytical approaches cannot, revealing possibilities to help guide adaptation strategies to avert future unpleasant "surprises".