MULTI-STRESS: Quantifying the impacts of multiple stressors in multiple dimensions to improve ecological forecasting

多重压力：在多个维度量化多种压力源的影响，以改进生态预测

• 批准号: NE/Z000130/1
• 负责人: Christopher Clements
• 金额: $ 85.89万
• 依托单位: University of Bristol
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2024 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FZ000130%2F1
• 关键词: MULTI; STRESS; Quantifying; impacts; multiple

Our world is characterised by change, driven largely by human activities. These activities - such as the harvesting of natural resources and emission of greenhouse gases - put pressure on our planet's ecosystems, reshaping global biodiversity through declines in the abundance of populations, and the extinction of species. However, we still have limited understanding of the mechanisms by which these detrimental activities (termed "stressors") affect wildlife populations. This lack of understanding is further exacerbated by the fact that most species globally (~80%) are exposed to more than one stressor (e.g. fishing pressure and climate change) simultaneously. In such a scenario, stressors may interact in unpredictable ways, further accelerating biodiversity declines. Consequently, without a better understanding of how stressors interact to impact wildlife populations it is impossible to accurately forecast how biodiversity will change into the future, or identify species at the highest risk of extinction. This project will tackle this gap in our knowledge in a fundamentally different way to what has been attempted before. Rather than solely examining the impacts of multiple stressors on population abundances, we will use an exceptional dataset of two Vulnerable Red Listed seabird species as a model system to quantify how two prominent stressors (climate change and fishery pressure) impact multiple facets of a population's ecology simultaneously. We will explore how stressors impact behaviours (individual foraging effort), physical condition (body condition, a measure of an individual's overall health), demographic rates (e.g., survival, fecundity), and population trends over time within a single analytical framework. Doing so will allow us to understand how wildlife populations change to cope with increasing levels of anthropogenically derived stress, whether such changes mitigate the negative impacts of multiple stressors, and whether these changes can be used to predict populations that are at risk of collapse. We will then use this information to build models to forecast how these vulnerable species will cope with future environmental change by explicitly incorporating individual's ability to change behaviour, morphology, and demographic rates in the face of increasing stress. The outcomes of this project have the potential to revolutionise our understanding of how multiple stressors impact multiple facets of a population's ecology, and how these impacts can sum to drive biodiversity change. The knowledge generated by this project will help conservationists to develop more effective strategies to manage at-risk species, policy makers to more reliably judge the impacts of resource extraction, and the general public to gain a deeper appreciation of the challenges faced by wildlife due to human activities. It will also provide a platform on which the wider research community can build to advance our understanding of the impacts of multiple stressors on biodiversity.

我们的世界充满变化，而变化主要是由人类活动驱动的。这些活动——例如自然资源的开采和温室气体的排放——给地球的生态系统带来了压力，通过人口数量的减少和物种的灭绝重塑了全球生物多样性。然而，我们对这些有害活动（称为“压力源”）影响野生动物种群的机制仍然了解有限。全球大多数物种（约 80%）同时面临多种压力源（例如捕捞压力和气候变化），这一事实进一步加剧了这种缺乏了解的情况。在这种情况下，压力源可能会以不可预测的方式相互作用，进一步加速生物多样性的下降。因此，如果不能更好地了解压力因素如何相互作用以影响野生动物种群，就不可能准确预测未来生物多样性将如何变化，或识别面临最高灭绝风险的物种。该项目将以一种与之前尝试过的根本不同的方式来解决我们知识上的差距。我们不会仅仅研究多种压力因素对种群丰度的影响，而是使用两种被列入红色濒危物种名单的海鸟物种的特殊数据集作为模型系统，以量化两种主要压力因素（气候变化和渔业压力）如何影响种群生态的多个方面同时地。我们将探讨压力源如何在单一分析框架内影响行为（个人觅食努力）、身体状况（身体状况，衡量个人整体健康状况）、人口统计率（例如生存率、繁殖力）以及人口随时间的变化趋势。这样做将使我们了解野生动物种群如何变化以应对日益增加的人为压力，这些变化是否减轻了多种压力源的负面影响，以及这些变化是否可以用来预测面临崩溃风险的种群。然后，我们将利用这些信息建立模型，通过明确纳入个体在面临日益增加的压力时改变行为、形态和人口比率的能力，来预测这些脆弱物种将如何应对未来的环境变化。该项目的成果有可能彻底改变我们对多种压力因素如何影响人口生态的多个方面，以及这些影响如何共同推动生物多样性变化的理解。该项目产生的知识将帮助自然资源保护主义者制定更有效的策略来管理濒临灭绝的物种，帮助政策制定者更可靠地判断资源开采的影响，帮助公众更深入地了解野生动物因资源开采而面临的挑战。人类活动。它还将为更广泛的研究界提供一个平台，以加深我们对多种压力源对生物多样性影响的理解。