Periodic Reporting for period 5 - SCALEFORES (SCALEFORES: Scaling Rules For Ecosystem Service Mapping)
Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2023-05-31
Such questions necessitate a landscape ecological approach, on the principle that ecosystem composition, structure and function partially depend on the spatial (and temporal) context of the ecosystem (i.e. its landscape context).
In the SCALEFORES project we adopt a landscape ecological approach to study a wide range of ecosystem services. We do empirical analyses of existing biophysical and socioeconomic datasets across broad geographic regions, in addition to spatial simulation modelling, to understand how landscape context affects ecosystem service provision at multiple scales.
The understanding gained from this research should be useful in understanding how to design, protect, and enhance landscapes relative to ecosystem services at multiple scales, and to inform tools for mapping ecosystem services.
As the project progressed, we become more interested in understanding and predicting land use change itself, as this is ultimately what drives ecosystem service and biodiversity delivery. Here, we came up with a new method for predicting frontiers of agricultural expansion that improves the prediction of future agricultural expansion.
Other major outputs included a systematic map of the impacts of urban greenspace on mental health, and paper looking at the drivers of woody vegetation dynamics across sub-Saharan Africa.
On-going work is to use one of the methods to understand trade-offs between reforestation for climate change mitigation and increasing the risk of deer damage to existing forests in Scotland.