Biodiversity and the Evolving Earth: New Data, New Methods, New Insights

在这个项目中，新的计算工具将被开发并应用于理解是什么驱动了地球上生命和景观的进化。我们将研究生物多样性是如何产生的，以及它与地形演变的关系。我们要解决的一个关键问题是：地形及其历史在多大程度上推动了陆地生物多样性？由于三个主要原因，了解地球上生命的历史及其地形的演变最近变得更加容易了。首先，由于生物学、古生物学和地球化学团体的努力，我们现在可以获得关于地球上几乎所有生命和许多环境过程的千兆字节的信息。这些清单包含了100多年来科学研究中获得的记录。几乎所有显生宙的生物群繁殖和灭绝的详细记录现在都有了。其次，几乎所有地球的现代地形和环境都已以米尺度分辨率绘制出来。这些数据，再加上使用无人机技术绘制的更详细的地图，使我们能够从单个河床到大陆尺度重建地球的地形和气候。最后，在理解如何确定时间、解释和建立生物和景观演化数学模型方面的快速进步，至少在大尺度上，与这些数据采集和汇编方面的进步相匹配。这些观察和理论上的进步改变了我们对进化的看法，也改变了我们对各种尺度的地质和生物过程的寿命和保存的看法。它影响了我们对生命和景观如何响应外部过程的理解，这是可靠地预测固体地球和生物圈对外部压力（如气候变化）的响应的重要一步。然而，我们目前缺乏一个框架，使我们能够理解在不同空间和时间尺度上运行的过程如何结合起来产生地球的生命和地形的历史。该项目将通过新的观测和开发数学和计算工具来解决这个问题，以了解物理、气候和地球化学过程如何结合起来产生地球上的地形和生物进化。该项目将适合地球科学家、生物学家、宏观生态学家、物理学家或应用数学家，他们希望从事一个多学科项目，使他们能够发展数据分析、计算和数学技能。他们将能够将这些技能应用于地质学、生物多样性和生态学之间的界面上令人兴奋的问题。

In this project, new computational tools will be developed and applied to understand what drives evolution of life and landscapes on Earth. We will examine how biodiversity is generated and how it relates to the evolution of topography. A key question we will address is: To what extent does topography and its history drive terrestrial biodiversity?Understanding the history of life on Earth and evolution of its topography has recently become significantly more tractable for three principal reasons. First, thanks to the efforts of the biological, palaeontological, and geochemical communities we now have access to gigabytes of information about nearly all life and many environmental processes that have ever been recorded on Earth. These inventories contain records acquired in more than 100years of scientific research. Detailed records of the proliferation and extinction of biota now exist for almost all of the Phanerozoic Eon. Secondly, nearly all of Earth's modern topography and environments have been mapped with metre-scale resolution. These data, combined with even more detailed mapping using drone technology, allow us to reconstruct Earth's topography and climate from individual riverbeds to continental scales. Finally, rapidadvances in understanding how to date, interpret and mathematically model biotic and landscape evolution, at least at large scales, have matched these advances in data acquisition and compilation. These observational and theoretical advances have changed the way we think about evolution, as well as longevity and preservation of geological and biological processes at a range of scales. It impacts our understanding of how life and landscapes respond to external processes, which is an important step towards reliably predicting the response of the solid Earth and biosphere to external pressures, such as climate change. However, we currently lack a framework that allows us to understand howprocesses operating at different spatial and temporal scales combine to generate Earth's history of life and topography. This project will address that problem, via new observations, and developing mathematical and computational tools to understand how physical, climatic and geochemical processes combine to generate topographic and biotic evolution on Earth.The project will suit an Earth scientist, biologist, macroecologist, physicist or applied mathematician who wants to work on a multidisciplinary project that will enable them to develop data analysis, computational and mathematical skills. They will be able to apply those skills to exciting problems at the interface between geology, biodiversity and ecology.