BEF-Up2: Upscaling exploratories data to understand the drivers of landscape multifunctionality

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Peter Manning
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Plants and Ecosystems ; Forestry ; Ecology of Land Use
• Term: from 2017 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 325101598

A major challenge in biodiversity-ecosystem functioning (BEF) research is to upscale biodiversity-functioning relationships to the landscape scale and demonstrate the role of biodiversity in driving the supply of multiple ecosystem services (landscape multifunctionality). In the BEF-Up project of the last Exploratories phase we related the biodiversity and ecosystem services of grasslands to both within-plot management and the biodiversity and landscape properties of the surrounding areas. The knowledge gained is now being used to upscale grassland ecosystem services to the landscape level. Meanwhile, in the social science SoCuDES project we are collecting data on stakeholder ecosystem service preferences.In BEFUp2 we will extend the approach of BEF-Up to forests and croplands and use this information to build a GIS based model of ecosystem service supply (WPs1&2). We will produce maps of ecosystem service supply for most major ecosystem services of the three regions. These will then be combined with the SoCuDES data on ecosystem service demand to generate measures of landscape level ecosystem service multifunctionality. Changes to stakeholder demands, land management and biodiversity will then be simulated in the GIS model to assess how these changes would affect the supply of a wide range of ecosystem services (WP3). This work will advance biodiversity-ecosystem function research, and the Biodiversity Exploratories project by linking the detailed plot measures of the Exploratories to the wider social-ecological system BEF-Up2 provides significant advance for the overall Biodiversity Exploratories project, particularly in placing its results in a broader societal context.

• DFG Programme: Infrastructure Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1374: Biodiversity Exploratories