Descripción del proyecto
Una mejor comprensión de los sistemas ecológicos y socioecológicos
La pérdida de biodiversidad supone una importante amenaza medioambiental, ya que asistimos a la desaparición de numerosas especies. Nos enfrentamos a una crisis medioambiental de proporciones sin precedentes. El equipo del proyecto BIOSTASES, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, pretende abordar este problema mediante el desarrollo de un nuevo cuerpo teórico sobre la estabilidad de los ecosistemas y los sistemas socioecológicos. Se centra en cuatro objetivos clave, a saber: proponer un nuevo marco matemático que utilice la variabilidad temporal como medida de estabilidad, desarrollar señales de alerta temprana para transiciones críticas, examinar las relaciones entre la diversidad y la estabilidad a diferentes escalas, y estudiar la estabilidad de metaecosistemas complejos. Al cumplir estos objetivos, la labor del equipo de BIOSTASES aportará nuevas perspectivas y tenderá puentes entre la ecología teórica y la empírica, contribuyendo así al desarrollo de nuevos métodos en la conservación de la biodiversidad y el desarrollo sostenible.
Objetivo
Biodiversity loss is one of the greatest environmental challenges of our time. There is mounting evidence that biodiversity increases the stability of ecosystem functions and services, suggesting that it may be critical to the sustainability of ecosystems and human societies in the face of environmental changes. Classical ecological theory, however, has focused on measures of stability that cannot explain and predict these stabilizing effects, especially in spatial systems.
The goal of BIOSTASES is to develop a coherent body of new theory on the stability of ecosystems and coupled social–ecological systems and its relationships with biodiversity at multiple spatial scales that can better inform empirical research. BIOSTASES will reach this goal through four complementary objectives. First, it will propose a mathematical framework focused on temporal variability as an empirically relevant measure of stability, and use this framework to build robust early warning signals for critical transitions. Second, it will use dynamical metacommunity models to explore a wide range of novel questions related to ecosystem stability and diversity–stability relationships across scales. Third, it will study the stability of complex meta-ecosystems to provide new perspectives on the stability of food webs and on synergies and trade-offs between multiple ecosystem services across space. Fourth, it will develop novel theory to study the long-term dynamics and sustainability of coupled social–ecological systems.
BIOSTASES proposes an ambitious innovative research programme that will provide new perspectives on the stability and sustainability of ecological and coupled social–ecological systems in the face of environmental changes. It will contribute to bridging the gaps between theoretical and empirical ecology and between ecology and social sciences, and to developing new approaches in biodiversity conservation, landscape management, and sustainable development.
Ámbito científico
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-ADG - Advanced GrantInstitución de acogida
75794 Paris
Francia