Disentangling climate change effects on biodiversity and forest ecosystem functioning: from insights to solutions

Human impacts are changing the global environment at unprecedented rates leading to a worldwide decline in biodiversity. The degradation of nature can in turn have an effect on services and goods delivered by ecosystems, resulting in significant damage to society, economy and environment. Worldwide, the decline of terrestrial biodiversity already causes a loss of ecosystem services between $4.3-$20.2 trillion per year. Hence, to forecast and mitigate the effects of global drivers of biodiversity loss is one of the great environmental challenges of our age. Combining fieldwork, long-term research platforms, experimental ecology and computational modelling, this research aims to increase our understanding of the impact of climate change-related disturbances (extreme drought events and invasive alien species) on European forests. The advancement of the scientific knowledge achieved by this research will contribute to better management of our natural resources in the face of accelerating global change.

Keywords:global change

Disciplines:Landscape architecture, Art studies and sciences, Physical geography and environmental geoscience, Communications technology, Geomatic engineering, Forestry sciences, Ecology, Environmental science and management, Other environmental sciences