Description du projet
Façonner des écosystèmes sujets au basculement
Les points de basculement représentent une préoccupation majeure dans la lutte contre le changement climatique. Ces points apparaissent lorsque les dommages causés aux écosystèmes dépassent un seuil critique, entraînant des altérations profondes et irréversibles. Les activités humaines sont souvent à l’origine de ces dommages, qui ont différentes conséquences sur la planète, notamment le changement climatique. Toutefois, de récentes recherches ont confirmé que des écosystèmes stressés ont tendance à développer des modèles spatiaux, tels que la végétation, qui renforcent considérablement leur capacité à résister aux points de basculement et à se remettre des dommages subis. Le projet Resilience, financé par le CER, étudie comment les points de basculement des écosystèmes peuvent être évités grâce à des processus structurels et à des schémas spatiaux. Le projet intégrera des domaines tels que l’écologie, les mathématiques et la science des données pour favoriser une réponse dynamique aux menaces posées par le changement climatique.
Objectif
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.
Champ scientifique
- 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
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Thème(s)
Régime de financement
HORIZON-ERC-SYG - HORIZON ERC Synergy GrantsInstitution d’accueil
3584 CS Utrecht
Pays-Bas