Scenarios of global change impacts on biodiversity based on innovative modelling approaches

The SCION project is supported by the Agence National pour la Recherche (ANR 6th Extinction) (French) as a 4 years project from 2010-2013. It is coordinated by Isabelle Chuine (CEFE, Montpellier)

Total grant: about 470K€

OBJECTIVES

There is an urgent need to develop a new generation of models that bridge the gap between niche-based models that can treat many species, but have little mechanism, and models that have a substantial degree of mechanism, but only treat a few species or species groups. The proposed research will make rapid progress by using hybrid approaches that take advantage of the combined strengths of the different types of models outlined above. These models will 1) provide quantitative descriptions of the major drivers of plant abundance and distribution (e.g., climate change, land use change, changes in disturbance regimes, invasive species, etc.), 2) explicitly simulate plant migration, 3) include interspecific interactions, especially plant competition, and 4) link community structure processes to species and ecosystem function processes. These models will include descriptions of woody and herbaceous plant species or species groups that structure plant communities, have high conservation value or are important invasive species.

Such type of models does not exist at present in any research group working in this field of research. The French research community in the field of biodiversity and ecosystems modelling is diverse in terms of approaches and types of model developed; and it is therefore in a strategic position to develop the new generation type of model that biodiversity modelling urgently needs. The consortium of SCION reflects this diversity which is one of the guaranties of success of the project. The approach of SCION is unique in that it combines the use of a broad range of models that can simulate the impact of climate change on biodiversity at the specie, community and habitat levels, and as well as the impact of climate change on species functioning.

No major technical difficulty that could hamper the success of SCION has been identified so far. Partners are well aware of the competences of each other as they have already collaborated in previous projects. Besides, SCION will build on results of a previous ANR Biodiversité project, QDiv, in terms of models comparison.

The models developed in this project will make substantial new contributions to the management of protected area in face of global change and to major international assessments of the impact of global change on biodiversity and ecosystem services. They will be applied to two regions particularly threatened by global change (see task 3 for details), the French Alps and the French Mediterranean border. One of the main results of SCION will be to provide accurate scenarios of biodiversity changes for a near future at fine spatial resolution for areas of the Mediterranean region especially sensible to Global Change.

SCION will address several of the key shortcomings of current plant diversity models but also demonstrate the benefit of the new generation models developed in a series of applications in protected areas with a strong dialog with natural resource managers. SCION is divided into four tasks. The two first tasks are devoted to the development of two new generation models of plant diversity and the linkages to international efforts to build new generation models. Task 3 is devoted to various applications of the new generation models in protected areas in the Alps and the Mediterranean. Task 4 is devoted to the dialog with natural resource managers.

Task 1 will be lead by partner 2 (ESE-UPSud-Orsay) who is a co-chair of the bioDISCOVERY Core Project of DIVERSITAS and is leading the focus on biodiversity projections. This task aims at stimulating the development of new generation models by the international scientific community as well as methods of estimating uncertainty in biodiversity projections. This task will be carried out through several international workshops which will convene leading international teams working on biodiversity modelling. It will produce review papers addressing the key issues to be solved in biodiversity modelling and contribute to international biodiversity assessments.

Task 2 will be lead by partner 1 (CEFE-CNRS-Montpellier), partner 3 (LECA-UJF-Grenoble) and partner 4 (IRD, Montpellier). The three of them are internationally recognized as leaders in biodiversity and ecosystem modeling. This task is devoted to the development of two new generation models, MPS and BioMove. MPS is a hybrid approach that combines fitness-based models with mechanistic models of plant and ecosystem functioning as well as communities dynamics. BioMove is a novel model of intermediate complexity that improves on niche-based models by adding several key mechanisms of plant response to global change, while remaining simple enough to be parameterized for a large range of plant species or functional groups. Task 2 will naturally benefit from task 1.

Task 3 will be lead by partner 1 and partner 2 and is devoted to applying the two new generation models BioMove and MPS developed in task 2 to case studies in protected areas particularly threatened by global change in the French Alps and the Mediterranean. BioMove and MPS will be used to simulate the evolution of the species distribution but also of the ecosystem functioning using different climate change, land use change and plant invasion scenarios in these protected areas. Simulations will be run at the finest spatial scale possible to meet the demand of natural resource managers for fine scale projections that can be used to develop adaptive management strategies.

Finally task 4, which will be lead by partner 3 and will use the results of task 3 to (i) develop state-of-the-art adaptive management strategies in the face of climate change and extreme drought; (ii) and to evaluate the degree to which French Alps conservation areas are able to maintain species distributions under a range of climate and land use change scenarios.

Scientific Partners:

CEFE - Montpellier: Isabelle Chuine, Emmanuel Gritti, Laurent Misson

ESE - Paris Orsay: Paul Leadley, Sandrine Fontaine

IRD - Montpellier: Florent Mouillot

LECA - Grenoble: Wilfried Thuiller, Sébastien Lavergne, Laure Gallien, Laure Zupan, Isabelle Boulangeat