Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/J008001/1
Managing landscapes for biodiversity during rapid climate change.
Grant Award
- Principal Investigator:
- Professor JMJ Travis, University of Aberdeen, Inst of Biological and Environmental Sci
- Grant held at:
- University of Aberdeen, Inst of Biological and Environmental Sci
- Science Area:
- Terrestrial
- Overall Classification:
- Terrestrial
- ENRIs:
- Biodiversity
- Environmental Risks and Hazards
- Global Change
- Natural Resource Management
- Science Topics:
- Conservation Ecology
- Population Ecology
- Genetic drift
- Population genetics
- Evolution & populations
- Evolution & populations
- Population Genetics/Evolution
- Abstract:
- As the climate warms, all wild species will have to adjust or adapt if they are to survive. We know from studying climate change after previous ice ages, that species all over the temperate parts of the earth adapted by shifting their geographic ranges, following where the climate led them. We also have evidence that numerous species are shifting their ranges now, but most do not seem to be "keeping up" with the climate. The problem is that natural (or seminatural) habitat for the majority of species is now rare and highly fragmented compared to the era before agricultural intensification and industrialisation. When a species' habitat is restricted to a tiny fraction of the land area, it becomes very difficult for it to invade new territory at the cool edge of its range: it could easily get stuck in isolated fragments of habitat and eventually go extinct as the climate becomes unsuitable. This is a major stimulus for conservation organisations and governments to recreate and restore habitats in order to reconnect potentially isolated populations. However it is unrealistic to suppose we could restore the areas of some habitats to their prehistoric levels. For example, in the UK woodland used to be the dominant habitat. To provide effective conservation of biodiversity in the UK, we need to make informed decisions about (a) how much woodland is enough to preserve the majority of species and (b) how to target woodland creation where it will be most beneficial in allowing range shifting to occur. We also have to find a way of proceeding when we don't know all the factors that limit each species' distribution now (factors ranging from temperature and rainfall to interactions with other species), and cannot reliably predict the direction and distance they will need to shift. This piece of research will assist this decision-making by finding a general-purpose strategy for habitat creation that will work for most species in most landscapes. We will test a number of strategies - all in the form of a numerical rule for deciding, given an existing landscape, which land parcel to choose next for conversion. As examples of existing landscapes we will use real landscapes in the UK, with habitat information from our project partner Forest Research and from the satellite derived "Land Cover Map 2007". We will judge the strategies based on simulations of animal and plant species invading the landscape (assuming they start from a small population at any one edge). The variation in traits of our simulated species (e.g. habitat specialism, reproduction rate and dispersal ability) will be based on the variation observed across all species for which data exists. We hope that this will produce results that are representative of the whole community, rather than focussing just on a few well-studied species. We will also include genetic information in our simulations - genetic diversity is an important, and sometimes overlooked, aspect of biodiversity, and one which may be dramatically reduced as the population passes through habitat "bottlenecks" during range expansion. Based on the simulation results we will be able to rank the landscapes both in terms of the proportion of species that survive, and the proportion of genetic diversity that survives in these populations. Our results will be useful to planners and conservation organisations, but also to any land owners who are interested in creating habitat to benefit wildlife. The ranking tool we will develop will be able to estimate the future value of a proposed habitat patches (e.g. areas of woodland) to biodiversity, and therefore strengthen the case for acquiring and maintaining the best sites when there are other competing demands on land use.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/J008001/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- Standard Grant (FEC)
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Standard Grant
This grant award has a total value of £319,474
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| DI - Other Costs | Indirect - Indirect Costs | DA - Investigators | DI - Staff | DA - Estate Costs | DA - Other Directly Allocated | DI - T&S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £53,156 | £114,374 | £22,537 | £107,590 | £11,419 | £2,380 | £8,017 |
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