Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Primer (Predicting the impacts of climate change and management actions for the invasiveness of alien species in Europe)
Berichtszeitraum: 2019-04-17 bis 2021-04-16
In European temperate regions, biological invasions are causing severe ecological and economic impacts. Predicting how climate change will affect future rates and impacts of biological invasions is thus crucial for conserving natural resources and biodiversity. Biological invasions are a major societal issue, with populations of non-native species causing high economic damage across Member States. A European Regulation adopted in 2014 aims to prevent new introductions and stop extant alien species from developing invasions. This requires robust predictions on how introduced alien species will respond to climate change and the management actions designed to prevent invasions. Predictions of ‘invasiveness’ - the ability of an introduced alien species to invade - tend to be based on climate envelope models, but these lack environmental and biological complexity and so produce erroneous predictions. This project has been specifically designed to develop novel models for predicting the consequences of climate change and management actions for the invasiveness of introduced alien species in Europe by integrating climatic, environmental, management and hydrological data. The objectives were thus to select the species to model and collate the data to be modelled, develop and validate an initial agent based model for predicting the invasiveness of an alien fish under current and future climate conditions, parameterise the initial model for each model species, and then predict, under simulations of climate change and management actions, the future invasiveness of the model fishes in some European river basins.
To build the ABMs, work was initially required (in Objective 1) to select the model alien fishes (MAF) to use and then collate data on their distribution-climate relationships; the hydrological connectivity of the basins to be modelled, the propagule pressure of the MAF and likely biotic resistance to MAF establishment in each model cell and patch, and how management actions would impact on MAF populations. This work as started. However, the ER was recalled to their home institution, curtailing progess in this aspect of the work to its conclusion, with this resulting in the Action being terminated before substantive progress could be made.
The project had high potential to construct state-of-the-art models for predicting the current and future distributions of a series of alien fishes of high relevance to European freshwaters. These would have assisted policy makers and practitioners in identifying risks to the environment and socio-economics. However, with the ER having to return to their home institution and the Action having to be terminated as a result, these results will no longer be able to be delivered in the project.