Descripción del proyecto
Modelización de los puntos de inflexión de los ecosistemas
Los puntos de inflexión constituyen una gran preocupación en la lucha contra el cambio climático. Estos puntos surgen cuando los daños a los ecosistemas superan un umbral crítico, provocando alteraciones profundas e irreversibles. Las actividades antrópicas suelen estar detrás de esos daños, que tienen diferentes efectos sobre el planeta, entre ellos el cambio climático. Sin embargo, investigaciones recientes han corroborado que los ecosistemas sometidos a estrés tienden a desarrollar patrones espaciales, como los de la vegetación, que refuerzan de forma notable su capacidad para hacer frente a los puntos de inflexión y recuperarse de los daños. En el proyecto Resilience, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, se examina cómo se pueden prevenir los puntos de inflexión de los ecosistemas mediante procesos estructurales y patrones espaciales. Su equipo combinará las disciplinas de la ecología, las matemáticas y la ciencia de datos para fomentar una respuesta dinámica a las amenazas que plantea el cambio climático.
Objetivo
There is an urgent need to understand the catastrophic effects that global environmental and climate change can have on the Earth, its system components and ecosystems. One area of critical concern is the imminent high-impact, abrupt and irreversible tipping of ecosystems. Recent discoveries indicate that tipping could be evaded and even reversed in ecosystems through spatial pattern formation of vegetation, thereby creating pathways of resilience. Many undiscovered pathways of resilience through spatial pattern formation could exist for tipping-prone ecosystems. This resilience could be even enhanced by the unexplored connection between spatial pattern formation and community assembly. The aim of RESILIENCE is to fundamentally advance our understanding and predictions of tipping and critical transitions in ecosystems and reveal how these can be evaded and even reversed through spatial pattern formation.
The RESILIENCE team consists of field-leading and complementary PI’s and is capable of addressing all aspects of this overarching project, linking theory and observation, spanning the fields of ecology, physics and mathematics. RESILIENCE will develop a new theory for emerging resilience through spatial pattern formation and link this with real tipping-prone biomes undergoing accelerating global change: savanna and tundra. Central to our theoretical approach is the novel mathematical connection between the origin of the formation of patterns and their resilience once they emerged. Our empirical approach will include the analysis of existing and new data from in situ observations and drone and satellite-based remote sensing. Our research will reveal which conditions and spatial patterns lead to the evasion and even reversal of tipping. Identifying these conditions and patterns will also expose how human interventions can prevent or reverse tipping and uncover that tipping-prone ecosystems could be much more resilient than currently thought.
Ámbito científico
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringremote sensing
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringroboticsautonomous robotsdrones
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecologyecosystems
- natural sciencesmathematics
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
Programa(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Régimen de financiación
HORIZON-ERC-SYG - HORIZON ERC Synergy GrantsInstitución de acogida
3584 CS Utrecht
Países Bajos