Reconciling food security and biodiversity conservation: an integrative modelling approach

也许未来几十年最大的社会挑战将是制定使我们能够可持续地养活世界不断增长的人口的方法。然而，实现粮食安全将不可避免地带来重大挑战，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大幅增加全球粮食产量1？在这个项目中，学生将与世界领先的生态建模（在阿伯丁）和土地利用建模（在爱丁堡）团体合作，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，该项目将使学生能够重点关注两个关键生物群体：传粉媒介和作物害虫，以探索土地利用的变化如何影响其空间动态，并可能对作物生产力和随后的土地利用决策产生反馈。改善对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，以评估替代土地使用和气候变化情景的影响，并指导防止对生物圈造成严重损害的计划。人们已经开发了许多生态模型来了解气候变化的影响，但这些模型有许多缺点。目前的模式中的一个主要遗漏是，它们忽略了土地使用的空间格局的变化，以及这些格局在不同的空间尺度上对生物多样性反应的影响。阿伯丁的特拉维斯小组是开发预测生物多样性对不断变化的土地使用和气候情景的反应的机械方法的领域领导者，最近发布了软件RangeShifter。爱丁堡的团队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3，已发布的模型从地方到国家和全球范围（例如Aporia，CRAFTY和PLUM）。整合土地利用和生态模型将为探索生态响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。Burslem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，以收集建模数据。学生将接受基于个人和代理的模型开发和应用方面的培训，以便他们获得联合使用方法的技能，以解决与农业集约化或扩张以及生物多样性动态之间的相互作用有关的一些关键问题。学生将有相当大的空间来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事项：1。未来的土地利用变化，主要是由农业集约化和扩张驱动的，会在多大程度上降低物种跟踪气候变化的能力？2.改变农业做法对不同作物害虫的流行和影响可能产生哪些影响？3.农业实践模式的变化将如何影响传粉者的区域持久性？参考文献：1 Butsic V，Kuemmerle T. 2015.利用优化方法调整粮食生产和生物多样性保护，超越土地共享和土地节约。生态应用25：589- 595.2城市MC，20作者，特拉维斯JMJ. 2016.改善气候变化下生物多样性的预测。科学，出版社。(to将于9月9日出版）3Alexander P，et al. 2016.评估土地覆盖物预测的不确定性。全球变化生物学，在线早期（DOI：10.1111/gcb.13447）。

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).