[AlienScenarios] Developing and applying scenarios of biological invasions for the 21st century

Duration: 2019 – 2022

Funding: Biodiversa and Belmont Forum

Description

Human agency has modified virtually every facet of the biophysical environment with profound implications for the status, distribution and resilience of biodiversity worldwide. Several major drivers of biodiversity loss have been identified with climate change, land-use change and biological invasions being among the most important ones. Changes in climate and land use have received much attention during the last decades, which resulted in readily available scenarios. In contrast, comparable approaches are completely missing for biological invasions despite its importance in driving biodiversity losses, and causing substantial negative impacts on human livelihoods. AlienScenarios aims to close this gap by, for the first time, evaluating the range of plausible futures of biological invasions for the 21st century at different spatial scales and for a range of taxonomic groups. We will combine the strategic forward-looking methodology of scenario planning with advanced modelling approaches to construct plausible global mid-term (2050) and long-term (2100) futures of biological invasions and their impacts taking into account uncertainties.

Contact

Franz Essl

Guillaume Latombe (guillaume.latombe@univie.ac.at)