Speaker
Description
Unsustainable use of ecosystems has led to the degradation of biodiversity and ecosystem services including reduced carbon sequestration, reduced pollination, and an increase in natural disasters. Widespread restoration of these ecosystems is crucial to address the biodiversity and climate crisis. Rewilding is a form of restoration aiming at improving the condition of ecosystems by recovering natural ecological processes. It intends to restore functional and self-sustaining ecosystems that provide multiple ecosystem services and require little to no human management in the long term. In this context, we seek to develop a set of spatially explicit indicators for monitoring rewilding trends and outcomes. Mapping wildness across Europe is essential to identify priority areas for rewilding and to support the implementation of restoration targets at national and European levels. We consider that the wildness of an ecosystem depends on its ecological integrity and the extent of human pressure. The former relies on three main components: trophic complexity, connectivity, and stochastic disturbance regimes. The more natural these components are, the higher the ecological integrity. We relate trophic complexity to the extent of defaunation: the presence of large-sized fauna – based on Europe wide database and species distribution modelling – in relation to its potential. In terms of connectivity, we consider terrestrial landscapes fragmented by urban fabric, linear infrastructure, and intensive agriculture, and aquatic landscapes fragmented by dams. Natural stochastic disturbances (e.g. floods and fires) are considered through the forestry, agricultural, and grazing impacts on primary productivity. Human pressure is captured through human presence and artificial interventions. Mapping such wildness indicators provides insight into the potential areas for resilient and self-sustaining ecosystems and identifies areas where restoration efforts should be focused.
| Status Group | Postdoctoral Researcher |
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