Description du projet
Prédire l’impact du changement climatique sur les récifs de corail
Les récifs coralliens occupent 0,1 % de la superficie des océans du monde et subviennent aux besoins de 25 % de toutes les espèces marines de la planète. Le changement climatique menace ces merveilles de la nature. Le projet 4D_REEF, financé par l’UE, examinera les zones qui peuvent aider les récifs de corail dans de futurs scénarios liés au changement climatique. Il développera des outils d’analyse et de contrôle, afin de comparer les conditions actuelles et passées, couvrant les ères géologiques du Pliocène et de l’Holocène. Les conclusions amélioreront notre compréhension de la réponse biotique aux changements environnementaux et fourniront les bases pour prédire l’impact du changement environnemental global actuel. En rassemblant des groupes et experts de pointe issus de différents domaines de la recherche, 4D_REEF établira également un cadre de formation pour les chercheurs en début de carrière.
Objectif
Coral reefs are the economically most highly valued ecosystems in the world. However, ongoing anthropogenic environmental changes have severely degraded their environments. Analyses of fossil data show that reefs living in so-called turbid habitats, characterized by the influence of terrestrial run-off, played an important role in the origins and maintenance of reef ecosystems. Key questions addressed in 4D-REEF are: 1) What did pristine reefs look like?; 2) Can we predict which areas will most likely support coral reefs in future climate change scenarios?; 3) Is it possible to develop monitoring tools that can be used to compare current and past conditions? We will study examples from the Holocene, prior to significant anthropogenic impact, and the Pliocene, a future greenhouse analogue, and compare them with the present-day reef conditions. These new data will provide the essential baselines for predicting the impact of ongoing global environmental change.
4D-REEF will develop new techniques for data collection, analysis, and visualisation that can be applied in future data-intensive projects in the Earth and Life Sciences. The increasingly complex, large size and 3D nature of datasets calls for the application of innovative techniques to be developed and standardised through cross-sectoral collaborations between Earth and Life scientists and visualisation experts.
4D-REEF will bring together leading groups and experts from a range of research environments, including universities, natural history museums, an applied science institute, SME, and NGO. This will generate a training environment in which the ESRs can make informed decisions to pursue high-level careers in or outside academia, and modify their training programme accordingly. Because of our interdisciplinary approach, the current need to understand biotic response to on-going environmental change, we believe that this is an ideal topic for the training of a cohort of Early Stage Researchers.
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
MSCA-ITN - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks (ITN)Coordinateur
2333 CR Leiden
Pays-Bas