RD 1.3.3 Resilience of ecosystems and biodiversity

What makes a system resilient, and how can we manage for resilience?

Biodiversity, the variety of life on earth, provides us with much of what we need to live, yet biodiversity is being lost at an unprecedented rate with adverse effects on the natural world and society. Understanding how species and ecosystems are likely to respond and finding ways of increasing their resilience is necessary to inform policy and management. The work here aims to increase our understanding of how species and biological communities may respond to land use and climate change, and how we can increase the resilience of these communities alongside human activity.

Aim of Research

Resilience of ecosystems and biodiversity. This work aims to study the different aspects of resilience of widlife species and natural ecosystems to improve our understanding of how biodiversity and ecosystems are likely to change in response to environmental and climate change, and how to manage them to increase their resilience to change.

Further information

General information on the Scottish Environment, Food and Agriculture Research Institutes (SEFARI) and the Scottish Government funded Strategic Research Portfolio can be found on the SEFARI website.
Within this, there are webpages providing summary overview information for each of the Research Deliverables (RDs) within the Strategic Programme. The page for RD 1.3.3 Resilience of ecosystems and biodiversity is available here and includes annual progress and highlights summaries, key outputs and links to case studies and key research staff.
To complement this, some additional information is provided below on Objectives within this RD.

Objective 1 (O1): Synthesis and integration for prioritisation of resilience management

• This work will identify and synthesise the best current knowledge and distil elements of wider applicability of the study of resilience to a range of ecosystems in Scotland.
• It will identify characteristics of ecosystems and traits of species associated with resilience.
• It will also investigate the potential of novel indices of ecosystem health and resilience.

Outputs already available include a review of the potential application of resilience concepts in the management of Biodiversity and Ecosystems (available here) and a report from a workshop (October 2017), run jointly with SNH, on the application of resilience to conservation of the natural environment (available here).

Objective 2 (O2): The consequences of environmental and climate change for ecosystem resilience

The responses in distribution and abundance of important vulnerable habitats and species (keystone, foundation and umbrella species) to the effects of land use and climate change provide nodes at which to understand mechanisms that govern resilience, and at which to target future effective delivery of biodiversity benefits and resilience management.

• The responses of:
  • different species including foundation and umbrella species eg Scots pine, Capercaillie, ants;
  • vulnerable habitats such as peatlands, and
  • ticks as major pathogen-vectors;
• to environmental stressors indicates their resilience to predicted change and management action.

Objective 3 (O3): The impacts of plant and animal disease, and the spread of INNS in natural environments

Endemic and non-native pests and pathogens and other INNS. can play a crucial role as mediators of ecological interactions that determine ecosystem resilience via their effects on key components of ecosystems, and the ability or otherwise of those components to resist, adapt or recover. This work objective investigates the consequences of some of these main threats to the integrity of natural and semi-natural ecosystems. We aim to:

• Undertake a significant body of work on the dispersal of fungal pathogens of plants and of INNS of shrubs and trees which will form the basis for predictions of spread of disease or INNS, and their impacts.
• Identify best practice for using grazing management to promote biodiversity benefits without compromising animal health, using cattle grazing areas of conservation of natterjack toads. A summary of recent work on this issue can be found here.
• Contribute to resolving the problem caused by the INNS grey squirrel as a driving influence in the decline of the native red squirrel.

Then as O2 and O3 progress, their outputs will feed into O1 to address gaps and strengthen its conclusions, applications and recommendations for management and policy action.

Policy relevance

Developing our understanding of resilience will aid our ability to predict, manage and conserve the natural environment via future policy formulation or refinement of current policies e.g. 2020 Challenge for Scotland's Biodiversity (2013) and 2020 Route Map (2015), Scottish Forestry Strategy (2006 et seq), Land Use Strategy (2011,2016), and the Climate Change (Scotland) Act (2009).