Projects

Project Profile: REEF-FUTURES

The futures of reef services in the Anthropocene

Who?

Principal Investigators: David Mouillot, University of Montpellier, France
Partners: John Kittinger, Arizona State University, United States
Aaron MacNeil, Dalhousie University, Canada
Valeriano Parravicini, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, France
Loic Pellissier, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Edgar Graham, University of Tasmania, Australia
Emily Darling, Wildlife Conservation Society, United States
Laurent Vigliola, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, France
Sonia Bejarano, Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research, Germany
Steven Lade, Stockholm University, Sweden
William Cheung, University of British Columbia, Canada
Jerry Tjiputra, Uni Research, Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Norway
Camilo Mora, University of Hawaii, United States
Pieter van Beukering, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Josh Cinner, James Cook University, Australia
Christina Hicks, Lancaster University, United Kingdom
Deron Burkepile, University of California, Santa Barbara, United States
Sponsors: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Canada
French National Research Agency, France
German Research Foundation, Germany
DLR Project Management Agency, Germany
Research Council of Norway, Norway
Formas, Sweden
Swiss National Science Foundation, Switzerland
Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, The Netherlands
National Science Foundation, United States

What?

Full Project Title: The futures of reef services in the Anthropocene
Full Call Title: Biodiversity2017
Website:

Why?

Project Objective: The project aims to move beyond the typical over-simplified ‘human impacts’ storyline and focus on uncovering new solutions based on a prospective and integrated modelling approach of reef social-ecological systems at the global scale with three objectives:

1. Quantifying five key services provided by reef fishes: (i) biomass production providing livelihoods, (ii) nutrient cycling that affects productivity, (iii) regulation of the carbon cycle that affects CO2 concentration, (iv) cultural value that sustains well-being tourism activities and (v) nutritional value insuring food security.

2. Determine the conditions (socioeconomic and environmental) under which these ecosystem services are currently maintained or threatened. Based on a global database of fish surveys over more than 5,000 reefs that encompass wide gradients of environments, human influences (fishing impact), and habitats, we will estimate the boundaries or thresholds beyond which these ecosystem services may collapse.

3. Predict the potential futures of these services and social-ecological systems under various global change scenarios. Using multiple integrated scenarios (human demography, economic development and climate change) and predictive models we will simulate the dynamics of shallow reef ecosystems and their ability to deliver services during the next century,
Call Objective: The Call addresses two major (non-exclusive) priorities:

- Development and application of scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services across spatial scales of relevance to multiple types of decisions;

- Consideration of multiple dimensions of biodiversity and ecosystem services in biodiversity scenarios.

Where?

Regions:
Countries:

When?

Duration: 36 months
Call Date: October 2, 2017
Project Award Date: July 13, 2018