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

该项目将研究哥伦比亚森林生态系统对环境和气候变化的长期恢复能力，并提高对森林退化对哥伦比亚社会未来影响的认识。我们关注的不是原始森林，因为它们被当地社区使用，并受到伐木和火灾的影响。这填补了在理解可能被视为生物“退化”的森林如何在生物多样性、生态系统服务以及它们如何参与地方和全球碳和能源循环方面发生变化的研究空白。该项目将通过建立一个跨越森林环境和退化梯度的永久性生态监测点网络来实现这一目标，以便对生物多样性进行评估，并测量火灾的当前和历史影响、碳储存和气候变化等过程。这些数据将与社会文化研究相结合，重点关注生物多样性保护的现有文化。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密切相关，包括持续冲突的影响。参与性研究和访谈还将使主要利益攸关方，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优先事项和产出。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保护国际框架至关重要。随着哥伦比亚摆脱数十年的冲突，土地利用已经发生了重大变化，例如在以前由于安全问题而无法进入的地区进行种植。我们的研究结果将从博雅卡和昆迪纳马卡的重点扩展到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，是全球碳循环中日益重要的驱动因素。然而，在哥伦比亚，几乎没有关于变化和从退化中恢复的信息；变化发生在什么时间尺度上；变化的主要社会环境驱动因素是什么？森林应该恢复到哪个基线。由于这种高度的不确定性，诸如减少森林砍伐和退化造成的排放（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方案可能不够雄心勃勃，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与多个生物物理数据源进行对话，以评估变化。我们将用新的田野、社会环境和长期生态数据来补充现有的样地数据，以创建一个独特的长期网络，覆盖整个Boyaca和Cundinamarca退化森林样地的类型和程度的变化（例如砍伐、砍伐+烧毁）。此外，我们将利用这些数据与遥感方法来评估森林的时空变化，并评估整个区域变化的驱动因素，为政策、保护和管理提供信息。该项目将为改进气候和植被模型提供关键信息，从而有助于评估森林和与森林相关的农业（如咖啡、可可）在面对未来气候变化时是否具有复原力。这些信息将用于与一系列利益相关者共同设计的政策建议和转型途径。总之，该项目可以转变对森林生物多样性和生态系统服务控制的认识，确定生态系统对气候和干扰的适应能力，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.