Ongoing projects
On this page we have gathered ongoing projects specifically funded by BECC. They are listed in the following order:
- PhD projects
- Postdoctoral projects
- Research projects
- Action Groups
PhD projects
Start: 2019
The aim of this project is to develop methodologies for a landscape approach for forested areas, demonstrate how synergies and trade-offs between ecosystem services can be analyzed using this approach and highlight the advantages compared to business as usual approaches. This will be done by addressing the following research question: What is the effect of alternative management strategies, characterized by different levels of forestry intensity, harvesting of biofuels from forests and protection of forests being distributed across the landscape, on trade-offs and synergies between carbon sequestration, biomass production (wood and biofuels), biodiversity and soil and water quality?
Though the collaboration between INES, CEC and SLU, a novel landscape approach for forests will be developed, that will benefit from the expertise on landscape approaches and ecosystem services in agricultural land at CEC.
Contact
PhD student
Tristan Bakx - portal.research.lu.se
Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
tristan [dot] bakx [at] nateko [dot] lu [dot] se
Supervisor
Start: 2019
The overriding aim of this project is to analyse the economic and environmental trade-offs of policy interventions to promote the use of agricultural land for producing biomass to reduce the use of fossil-based fuels. Specifically the aims of the PhD project are to:
I. Develop models that predict the impacts of intensifying agricultural production on biodiversity, eutrophication and carbon sequestration.
II. Evaluate the trade-offs that exist between increasing biomass production and other societal goals, specifically; conservation of biodiversity, and mitigation of GHG emissions and eutrophication.
III. Develop models that can optimize policy instruments for balancing economic and environmental trade-offs for both farmers and society.
The PhD will investigate several important environmental issues from a societal perspective but at the same time model decisions by farmers on their use of agricultural land, and generate findings relevant for sustainable development and formulating policy.
Contact
PhD student
Raül López i Losada – portal.research.lu.se
Centre for Environmental and Climate Science
raul [dot] lopez_i_losada [at] cec [dot] lu [dot] se
+46 46 222 41 99
Supervisor
Start: 2020
Many insect species are undergoing rapid population decline in recent decades due to anthropogenic changes to natural landscapes and climate. Pollinator declines in particular may have especially far-reaching effects due to the services they provide to plant communities. Understanding how habitat fragmentation differentially impacts these species is vital for performing proper conservation action in such complex communities. Landscape level studies on these impacts have previously overlooked the evolutionary implications of these land use changes on populations and how they may affect their ability to adapt to changing environments. To address this, I will compare highly fragmented and largely continuous semi-natural grasslands, examining how genetic diversity and adaptive potential varies in these environments for pollinators.
I will measure changes in genetic diversity and prevalence of deleterious mutations in insect pollinators sampled before and after the onset of large-scale human disturbances within Sweden in habitats of varying fragmentation. To do this I will sample whole genomic data from modern field and historical museum specimens, comparing the diversity present in the past with what I sample in contemporary populations, and how this differs with changes in habitat continuity.
Additionally, as adaptive potential is constrained by the phenotypic variation present in the population, I will examine the evolvability of several morphological features, and how this differs between populations. For all these analyses, I will focus initially on a common generalist - the Common Blue Butterfly, Polyommatus icarus - and expand into other species, potentially a more specialist butterfly species or solitary bees.
Contact
PhD student
Zachary Nolen - portal.research.lu.se
Department of Biology
zachary [dot] nolen [at] biol [dot] lu [dot] se
Supervisor
Start: 2021
The overall aim of the project is to develop, test and apply methodology for detection and quantification of spatially explicit drought effects on Nordic agricultural and forest ecosystems and their productivity. Furthermore, it aims to develop readiness for the next drought by developing policy and management capability based on remote sensing integrated with meteorological and other environmental data.
Contact
PhD student
Mitro Müller - portal.research.lu.se
Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
mitro [dot] muller [at] nateko [dot] lu [dot] se
Supervisor
Start: 2017
My doctoral project regards forest conflicts in Sweden and how these have been acknowledged and managed by the state. I study how different interests, such as private and public interests are expressed within the state and how these constitute forest conflicts. Theoretically, I use ideas about politicization, ownership and the environmental state.
Contact
PhD student
Maja Tejre - portal.research.lu.se
Department of Political Science
Supervisor
Start: 2019
This project will improve our understanding of the soil C feedback from microorganisms due to climate change induced warming. Microorganisms play a crucial role in the global C cycle. The balance between the microbial release of C to the atmosphere due to respiration and microbial use of C for growth – and subsequent potential sequestration in soil – will determine if terrestrial systems become sources or sinks for atmospheric CO2. The primary physiological factor that determines how microorganisms partition their C-use into catabolic energy generation or for anabolic growth is the carbon-use efficiency (CUE). Climatic warming will affect the activity and adaptation of microorganisms, however the microbial feedback to these changes remain unknown. This microbial C-feedback to the atmosphere is probably one of the most critical, yet least known, parts of climate-C cycle modelling; emphasizing the urgency for this research. The main objective of this project is to determine the effects of soil warming on microbial CUE in different biomes and across seasons.
The PhD student project will address all three central BECC aims: (1) we will assess climate change impacts on ecosystem services (how warming will affect, and feedback to, biogeochemistry), (2) we will support regional, national and global climate-change policymakers through the scientific evaluation of policy options (integration of findings into LPJ-GUESS and EC-Earth Earth System Model (ESM), generating advice in the form of scenarios relevant to the IPCC and local and national government stakeholders via CMIP6), and (3) we will we will create and nurture a critical and lasting link between the strong research environments of empirical ecosystem ecology and biogeochemistry (dept Biology) and ecosystem modelling (INES) through joint supervision. Moreover, since LPJ-GUESS is currently coupled to the EC-Earth ESM, model developments made here can be tested in global ESM experiments beyond the core CMIP6 experiments being committed to by colleagues in SRA MERGE.
Contact
PhD student
Daniel Tájmel – portal.research.lu.se
Department of Biology
daniel [dot] tajmel [at] biol [dot] lu [dot] se
Supervisor
Start: 2019
Ecosystem models calculating wetland emissions incorporate process knowledge
(bottom-up modeling) and allow estimation of methane (CH4) fluxes at various scales ranging from local to regional and global. The main aim of this project is to apply model-data fusion (formally called ‘data assimilation’) techniques to improve quantification and understanding of the natural CH4 cycling in boreal wetlands.
The specific aims are to:
1. Develop a CH4 Data Assimilation System around the LPJ-GUESS dynamic global vegetation model based on a Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach.
2. Generate improved model process parameter estimates, with quantified posterior uncertainties by assimilating observed CH4 fluxes from wetlands.
3. Quantify how assimilation of observations increases confidence in the analysis of the CH4 emissions from wetlands.
4. Provide new scientific insights and process understanding, e.g. what controls the sensitivity of CH4 emissions from wetlands to external forcing.
5. Provide a CH4 budget for the boreal region for the dominant natural emission source (i.e. wetlands).
6. Provide input to the Global Carbon Project’s CH4 budget as well as deliver elaborated products (i.e. maps of CH4 fluxes from wetlands) to e.g. the Carbon
Portal of the Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) derived from CH4 flux observations at, among others, ICOS sites.
Through the model-data fusion approach it is particularly relevant to the research area on data assimilation and multimodel integration by combining measurements with ecosystem models. The research will improve our understanding of wetlands processes and CH4 cycling as included in models and will improve upscaling processes from local to regional/global scales. It will thus refine the predictions of future CH4 wetland emission to inform policy making especially with regard to the Paris Agreement of the UNFCC and subsequent NDCs.
Contact
PhD student
Jalisha Theanutti - portal.research.lu.se
Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
jalisha [dot] theanutti [at] nateko [dot] lu [dot] se
Supervisor
Start: 2019
My research interest concerns the effects of wildfire on Swedish boreal forests in a changing climate. This covers development of understanding regarding carbon & nutrient cycling and community & habitat structure at various stages of succession using observational data over a large climate gradient.
Currently we have 50 burnt plus 50 adjacent control sites from the 2018 fires established throughout the approximately 57-67 degree latitudinal range of Sweden (0-8 C MAP, 550-775 mm MAP). Here we have acquired in situ measurements of soil layer depths/densities, C&N stocks, PLFA contents, basal area and assessments of understory biodiversity. Data has also been collected from soil and air ambience loggers, resin capsules, and teabags. We welcome contact from researchers of all levels to contribute ideas to this now well established network, including those who may wish to tag along to perform complementary measurements as we visit our sites. Particularly, we are interested in enhancing/comparing our observational data with/to remote sensing, global measurements, and experiment. Additionally, assessing soil change at the chemical level (e.g. measures of pyrolysis, char production) due to fire and linking it to observed trends is of great interest.
Contact
PhD student
Johan Eckdahl - portal.research.lu.se
Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
johan [dot] eckdahl [at] nateko [dot] lu [dot] se
Supervisor
Start: 2019
My PhD project aims to contribute to the field of environmental decision making under uncertainty. This interdisciplinary work will bring together environmental psychology, economics, ecological modeling, public management, risk analysis and statistics to inform public policy and provide clarity of action in human-environment conflicts.
Contact
PhD student
Dmytro Perepolkin – portal.research.lu.se
Centre for Environmental and Climate Science
dmytro [dot] perepolkin [at] cec [dot] lu [dot] se
+46 46 222 08 89
Supervisor
Postdoctoral projects
The proposed project aims at improving our understanding of plant-pollinator community dynamics and structure as a response to landscape changes. Such understanding is imperative for our efforts to protect biodiversity and maintain ecosystem services provided by pollinators in both natural and managed (e.g. agriculture) ecosystems. Our ability to do so is, however, limited due to a lack of understanding of interacting spatiotemporal processes that shape different ecosystems. We are thus assembling a team of BECC-affiliated theoretical and empirically oriented researchers that will support a postdoctoral research program to formalize the complexity in which plant-pollinator communities respond to changes in landscape structure and agricultural intensity. We will construct spatially explicit trait-based and eco-evolutionary models that explicitly model the interacting ecological (e.g. pollination), evolutionary (e.g. adaptation in functional traits) and spatial (e.g. dispersal) processes that are knowns to structure plant-pollinator communities but that are lacking in most community models. The project is thus predominantly theoretical but an explicit link between models and applied research within BECC is assured through a team effort to use available data for model parameterization and test of the developed theory.
Contact
Postdoc
Lingzi Wang
Centre for Environmental and Climate Science
Collaborating researchers
Mikael Pontarp (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Magne Friberg (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Jacob Johansson (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Anna Persson (Centre for Environmental and Climate Science) - portal.research.lu.se
Biodiversity offsets are an increasingly popular yet controversial tool in conservation. Their popularity lies in their potential to meet the objectives of biodiversity conservation and of economic development simultaneously; the controversy lies in the need to accept ecological losses in return for uncertain gains, and the wide adoption despite methods and overriding conceptual framework being still under development. This project will address this knowledge gap by developing an ecological-economic conceptual framework to investigate the factors that can reduce the effectiveness of biodiversity offsets as a conservation tool, and will collect empirical evidence of biodiversity offset programs around the world to quantify the importance of such factors.
In 2011, the EU Biodiversity Strategy called on the European Commission to develop a No-Net-Loss (NNL) initiative for Europe’s ecosystems and ecosystem services, a request that was repeated that year by the Environment Council of Ministers and by the European Parliament. An impact assessment published in 2016 suggested that in order to achieve NNL of biodiversity in Europe mandatory offsetting measures would be necessary. This project will investigate how governments can promote the application of offsets through regulatory frameworks that enable the involvement of the private sector while delivering real reductions of environmental degradation.
Contact
Postdoc
Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg
joao [dot] vaz [at] economics [dot] gu [dot] se
Collaborating researchers
Jessica Coria (Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg) - gu.se
Yann Clough (Centre for Environmental and Climate Science) - portal.research.lu.se
Start: 2020
Grain legumes have the potential to provide climate-smart protein for human consumption and livestock fodder, while simultaneously enhancing pollinator habitat and soil productivity, thereby promoting sustainable agricultural land use and benefits to multiple ecosystem services. However, current grain legume acreages in Europe and Sweden are small. We aim to evaluate the desirability of increasing legume production on current arable land in Sweden to meet climate, food security and environmental goals, and to identify policy pathways that can accomplish this, using a mixed method approach that combines ecology, ecological-economic modelling and trans-disciplinary policy analysis.
We will: i) quantify multiple environmental benefits of increasing grain legume production using mechanistic and statistical models (agri-ecological production functions) based on empirical data and data from the literature; ii) evaluate impacts on farmers’ welfare (and thus willingness to grow legumes) using agent-based modelling; iii) evaluate the impacts on societal welfare of policy scenarios affecting grain legume acreages in dialogue with stakeholders, using our integrated modelling and complementary benefit-cost analysis, under different assumptions of future use of grain legume crops. We will synthesize the results, and use them to inform the future development of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy to benefit sustainable agricultural production and consumption.
Contact
Postdoc
Liam Kendall - portal.research.lu.se
Centre for Environmental and Climate Science
liam [dot] kendall [at] cec [dot] lu [dot] se
Collaborating researchers
Henrik Smith (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Mark Brady (AgriFood Economics Centre, SLU) - portal.research.lu.se
Kimberly Nicholas (Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies) - portal.research.lu.se
Start: 2020
The forest contributes to human well-being in many ways. To avoid overuse and unintentional ecosystem changes, this multi-functionality has to be addressed when developing forest management strategies and policies. The aim of this transdisciplinary project is to quantify and visualize the contribution of different adaptive management strategies to climate solutions and fulfilment of environmental objectives during the transition towards a fossil-free society. We will involve forest owners, forest advisors and people working with nature protection in discussions on climate impacts and ecosystem services, for co-production of explorative scenarios. We will address goal conflicts and their underlying causes, and how knowledge and uncertainties concerning ecosystem services and climate change can influence the choice of forest management strategy. We will develop composite indicators to allow for comparison of complex data from multiple ecosystem model runs, quantifying the impacts of climate change and forest management on the provisioning of ecosystem services, forestry economy and risk taking. Science-stakeholder discussions will together with the composite indicators form the basis for novel visualizations of the outcome of adaptive management strategies. The results will be presented as scenario-based stories, depicting the structure and functioning of managed forest ecosystems in relation to a range of climate futures.
Contact
Postdoc
Hanna Fors - portal.research.lu.se
Centre for Environmental and Climate Science
hanna [dot] fors [at] cec [dot] lu [dot] se
+46 46 2223821
Collaborating researchers
Anna Maria Jönsson (Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science) - portal.research.lu.se
Johannes Stripple (Department of Political Science) - portal.research.lu.se
Fredrik Lagergren (Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science) - portal.research.lu.se
Start: 2020
Shifts in the seasonal timing of flowering is a commonly observed effect of climate change. Flowering time is primarily controlled by temperature and daylength and, as a result of evolution, the use of these cues is often genetically adapted to the local climate. Will future climates render such evolved controls suboptimal and if so, what will evolution replace them with? As part of an ongoing BECC-collaboration, this Postdoc project will develop general theory for how selection drives responses of flowering time to changes in temperature and daylength, for both crops, structured via artificial selection for high yield, and for wild species, structured via intense competition. The theory will be used to assess the robustness of flowering strategies adapted to current climates to expected future climate change. The project focuses on annual plants which, due to their short generation times, are particularly likely to exhibit rapid evolutionary responses to environmental change. Annual plants furthermore include important crops, invasive weeds and pollen-allergy causing plants. By improving our understanding of flowering time adaptations in this group our findings may thus find applications in e.g. plant breeding to address food security and in predicting and managing invasive species in a changing climate.
Contact
Postdoc
Willian Silva - portal.research.lu.se
Centre for Environmental and Climate Science
willian [dot] silva [at] cec [dot] lu [dot] se
+46 46 222 42 37
Collaborating researchers
Jacob Johansson (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Mats Hansson (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Åslög Dahl (Department of Biological & Environmental Sciences, University of Gothenburg) - gu.se
Anna Maria Jönsson (Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science) - portal.research.lu.se
Start: 2020
Large scale drought hit Sweden in 2018 and the extremely hot summer days of 2019 sets new heat records across Europe. Global warming is not only increasing mean temperatures, but also extremes, driving evaporation and increasing water vapour pressure deficit, resulting in more frequent and extreme drought. Currently the growth rate of northern forests is increasing but there is evidence that drought induced mortality is also on the rise in boreal and temperate forests. Increased biomass is linked to higher water demand which may lead to so-called structural overshoot, exacerbating the vulnerability of forests to drought. The proposed project will leverage and build on ongoing projects and developments at Gothenburg and Lund Universities, as well as encourage state of the art research and strengthen Lund-Gothenburg cooperation. Identification and analysis of extreme weather events will be combined with newly developed hydrology processes in the ecosystem model LPJ-GUESS to analyze past, current and future impact of drought on Swedish and Eurasian ecosystems. The postdoc will focus on using and refining a model version that includes deep water storage and ground water and evaluate the impact of extreme weather events in the past and in the future.
Contact
Postdoc
Zhengyao Lu - portal.research.lu.se
Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
zhengyao [dot] lu [at] nateko [dot] lu [dot] se
Collaborating researchers
Anders Ahlström (Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science) - portal.research.lu.se
Deliang Chen (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg) - gu.se
Soils contain the largest carbon (C) pool in terrestrial ecosystems, and the capacity of soils to sequestrate C is thus important for climate mitigation. However, model uncertainties caused by inadequate process descriptions of carbon-nutrient interactions lead to high uncertainties in the future projections of terrestrial C sequestration. The aim of this project is to include soil microbial and mineral mechanisms into a terrestrial biosphere model (TBM), to improve the assessments of nutrient constraints on soil C sequestration. A combined approach of process-based modelling and soil measurements from four forest sites will be used in two sub-studies: (1) improving the representations of carbon-nutrient interactions of a soil C model, which already contains microbial and mineral mechanisms, to be able to quantify the effects of microbial mechanisms on soil organic matter formation/turnover and (2)coupling this soil C model with a TBM to investigate the nutrient constraints on soil C sequestration, and applying the improved TBM on 544 forest sites in a national database to investigate the effects of nutrient constraints on soil C sequestration across Sweden. The improved model will be capable of better predicting the effects of management strategies on C sequestration, to provide more robust decision support.
Contact
Postdoc
Lin Yu (CEC) – portal.research.lu.se
Centre for Environmental and Climate Science
lin [dot] yu [at] cec [dot] lu [dot] se
+46 707457648
Collaborating researchers
Cecilia Akselsson (Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science) - portal.research.lu.se
Johannes Rousk (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Research projects
Start: 2020
Changing precipitation patterns and more frequent and more intense extreme weather events projected by future climate scenarios pose considerable risks for the Swedish agricultural sector. One way to adapt agriculture to the negative effects is the conservation of soil organic carbon through favourable agricultural management practices. In the project we will, firstly, quantify the risk and consequences, agricultural and economic, for farmers of failing to adjust or to implement soil management to abate foreseen climate changes and, secondly, investigate the role of climate scenarios and science-based projections of future crop yields and profits for farmers’ willingness to adapt their management practices to climate change. The project has a regional focus on southern Sweden. We will develop and apply an extended version of the C-Bank model to quantify and visualize the effects of future climate changes on crop yields and profits for farms in southern Sweden. Further, we will estimate the costs and benefits of measures to conserve soil organic carbon to adapt farms to climate change. This information will be presented to farmers to investigate the role of farm-specific information for farmers’ willingness to adopt climate adaptation measures.
Contact
Project leader
Wilhelm May - portal.research.lu.se
Centre for Environmental and Climate Science
wilhelm [dot] may [at] cec [dot] lu [dot] se
Collaborating researchers
Katarina Hedlund (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Mark Brady (AgriFood Economics Centre SLU) - portal.research.lu.se
Maria Ingimarsdottir (Department of Biology, LU) - portal.research.lu.se
Start: 2020
Biodiversity monitoring of insects is a daunting task, traditionally requiring prohibitive amounts of time and taxonomic expertise. Metabarcoding of environmental DNA (eDNA) has propelled the field of biodiversity monitoring of macroorganism into a new era. Metabarcoding allows the simultaneous identification of multiple species using short characteristic gene sequences, while eDNA refers to the DNA released by organisms into water, sediment or air. In a pilot experiment we have shown for the first time that airborne eDNA can be used to detect flying insects. Here we propose to develop and validate the method for the biodiversity monitoring of insects. The method development will be coordinated with other BECC researchers that start using eDNA in a wide range of projects, to foster competence building and institutional learning about eDNA methods at BECC. The proposal is an interdisciplinary collaboration between three departments, two faculties and two strategic research areas (BECC and MERGE), leveraging the unique combination of taxonomical, ecological, molecular biological and aerosol technological expertise present. The proposed method has applications in biodiversity studies, invasive species monitoring, pest monitoring and public health.
Contact
Project leader
Niklas Wahlberg - portal.research.lu.se
Department of Biology
niklas [dot] wahlberg [at] biol [dot] lu [dot] se
Collaborating researchers
Fabian Roger (Centre for Environmental and Climate Science) - portal.research.lu.se
Jakob Löndahl (Ergonomics and Aerosol Technology) - portal.research.lu.se
A project on the biodiversity offsetting policies in Sweden and abroad. It entails an interdisciplinary perspective from environmental science and political science. The analysis cover the institutional design, policy processes, actor perceptions, and the current implementation practices.
Biodiversity offsetting policies - portal.research.lu.se
Contact
Project leader
Åsa Knaggård - portal.research.lu.se
Department of Political Science
asa [dot] knaggard [at] svet [dot] lu [dot] se
+46 46 222 01 64
Collaborating researchers
Johanna Alkan Olsson (Centre for Environmental and Climate Science) - portal.research.lu.se
Fariborz Zelli (Department of Political Science) - portal.research.lu.se
Helena Hanson (Centre for Environmental and Climate Science) - portal.research.lu.se
Nils Droste (Department of Political Science) - portal.research.lu.se
Terese Thoni - (Centre for Environmental and Climate Science) - portal.research.lu.se
Guilherme Rodrigues Lima (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) - ufrj.br
Start: 2020
Peatlands are a key element when it comes to meet several challenges outlined in the UN sustainable development goals. Despite covering less than 3% of the Earth’s land surface, peatlands store 30% of all soil carbon and are important carrier of biodiversity. But, climate and land-use changes have resulted in an alarming tree colonization affecting biodiversity, hydrology and carbon sequestration for many boreal peatlands. As for now, hardly any interdisciplinary study has investigated the cause and effects of such tree colonization and involved feedbacks. We will therefore use the latest developments in simulation techniques to explicit tree colonization modelling and linked hydrology, carbon and climate feedbacks. However, the models need to be validated before we can determine how accurate such projections are. We therefore propose a Postdoctoral project to (1) compile existing monitoring data showing links and feedbacks between climate, hydrology and tree growth in peatlands, and (2) use our data to test existing models and to provide reliable projections of peatland responses in the context of future climate scenarios. We will cooperate with stakeholders operating peatland restoration projects, allowing direct implementation of our results in restoration initiatives to maximize the benefits of the project in terms of sustainable management.
Contact
Project leader
Johannes Edvardsson - portal.research.lu.se
Quaternary Sciences
johannes [dot] edvardsson [at] geol [dot] lu [dot] se
Collaborating researchers
Veiko Lehsten (Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science) - portal.research.lu.se
Leif Klemedtsson (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg) - gu.se
Åsa Kasimir (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg) - gu.se
Start: 2020
Understanding which factors determine how a species responds to environmental change allows us to anticipate future shifts in community composition. Populations that experience severe stress, such as in the face of climate change, may avoid extinction through adaptation by natural selection. This process is known as evolutionary rescue and can provide a means for species conservation. Informed conservation practices are more urgent than ever in tundra ecosystems, where temperatures are rising faster than anywhere else on the planet. Taken together, our objectives are to leverage genomic diversity in Arctic plants to 1) determine their adaptive potential to future predicted climate change, and 2) model the future spread of allelic variation and adaptive genotypes. Through a combination of existing common garden experiments and sampling from natural populations, together with genomics and ecological niche models, we aim to identify adaptive potential to climate change across scales and over time. Linking information about intraspecific genomic responses to climate will allow us to better predict population and species persistence under different future climate change scenarios.
Contact
Project leader
Department of Biological & Environmental Sciences, University of Gothenburg
christine [dot] bacon [at] bioenv [dot] gu [dot] se
+46 766185167
Collaborating researchers
Anne Bjorkman (Department of Biological & Environmental Sciences, University of Gothenburg) - gu.se
Mats Hansson (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Start: 2020
There is no clear scientific consensus about the effects of the herbicide glyphosate on human health and the environment. Yet, the societal debates about its regulation and economic consequences are heated. Social media (and more specifically Twitter) content constitutes a useful source of information and influence for policy makers, stakeholders and other actors when it comes to important socio-ecological issues such as the potentially harmful use of glyphosate in farming and gardening. Understanding the dynamics and (emotional) content of the discourse can raise awareness and help to take relevant actions. To map the discursive terrain over time, we will employ state of the art social media analysis algorithms that allow us to derive sentiment (like happiness and sadness), stances (like certainty and uncertainty), and latent topics from around 2.5 million tweets on glyphosate from 2006-2019 in all European languages. Thereby, the GlyphoSentiment project will contribute knowledge on how to tackle the socio-ecological challenges and improve our understanding of how science, policy, and social media discourse interact on a highly contested topic.
Contact
Project leader
Nils Droste - portal.research.lu.se
Department of Political Science
nils [dot] droste [at] svet [dot] lu [dot] se
+46 763417341
Collaborating researchers
Marion Dupoux (Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg) - gu.se
Niklas Boke Olén (Centre for Environmental and Climate Science) - portal.research.lu.se
Hakim Abdi (Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science) - portal.research.lu.se
Start: 2020
Tropical rainforests—adapted to a thermally stable climate—are suggested to be particularly vulnerable to global warming, but this hypothesis remains poorly evaluated due to data scarcity. This project uses a unique elevation gradient experiment in Rwanda to explore if projected global warming will lead to exceedance of biochemical thermal tolerance limits in different tropical tree species. The experiment includes 5400 trees of 20 species with contrasting ecological strategies, grown at three sites with large differences in climate (18-24 °C mean daytime temperature; 1050-2100 mm precipitation) and water supply treatments (irrigation, rainfall exclusion). Our past research on photosynthesis and leaf thermal regulation have demonstrated large heat stress and associated mortality in some species. Here we propose new measurements and modelling to explore heat stress impacts for a broader range of species and at larger spatial scale. Results have important implications for tree community composition and, thus, carbon storage and biodiversity, of tropical forests in a warmer world. The project brings together different departments and disciplines (ecophysiology, remote sensing, modelling) and is highly relevant for BECC’s research strategy. Close involvement and interactions with key stakeholders facilitates efficient use of the research results in society.
Contact
Project leader
Department of Biological & Environmental Sciences, University of Gothenburg
johan [dot] uddling [at] bioenv [dot] gu [dot] se
Collaborating researchers
Heather Reese (Department of Biological & Environmental Sciences, University of Gothenburg)- gu.se
Eric Dusenge (Department of Biological & Environmental Sciences, University of Gothenburg) - gu.se
Start: 2020
Bryophytes (mosses and liverworts) are particularly sensitive to climate and land use changes but existing monitoring programmes are insufficient to reveal trends at species or community levels. This project opens an unprecedented new opportunity for tracking changes using airborne spores identified by eDNA techniques. To detect radioactive downfall, the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) since 1965 continuously filter large quantities of air onto glass fibre filters, replaced weekly at 6 stations across the country. It has proved possible to retrieve and identify airborne particles from these permanently stored filters using eDNA techniques. Currently, the data set contains records from Kiruna during the period 1974-2010. Bryophytes are richly represented in this world-unique archive by seasonally released spores. We aim to study trends in abundancy for individual species and total community assemblage and match it to available local meteorological data and land use data. We will also study phenological shifts in relation to meteorological data across the time series. A major overall aim of this pioneering project is to set a standard for future eDNA studies in terms of taxon selection, sequence validation, field data collection and statistical treatment.
Contact
Project leader
Nils Cronberg - portal.research.lu.se
Department of Biology
nils [dot] cronberg [at] biol [dot] lu [dot] se
+46 222 89 47
Start: 2020
Pesticides are used to control pests in agriculture, but can also lead to exposure and effects on non-target pollinators. Bees are important pollinators that can be exposed to pesticides when foraging for pollen and nectar in agricultural landscapes. There are several routes of pesticide exposure for bees, but one less explored is that through air. Pesticides in the air are part of the national environmental quality monitoring since ten years and residues of over 50 compounds can be found throughout the vegetation season. In this project, we aim to quantify bee pollinator exposure to pesticides through air and food along an agricultural intensification gradient defined by the proportion of cropland in the surrounding landscape. We will sample air, bees, nectar and pollen at six apple orchards in southernmost Sweden, distributed along a gradient of increasing cropland and decreasing semi-natural grassland and forest in the landscape. The identity and concentrations of pesticides will be related among materials and to the intensification gradient, forming the basis for land use policy to reduce pollinator pesticide exposure. Our findings will be useful for pollinator conservation, harnessing pollination services to crops and wild plants and for authorities, growers of insect pollinated crops and beekeepers.
Contact
Project leader
Maj Rundlöf - portal.research.lu.se
Department of Biology
maj [dot] rundlof [at] biol [dot] lu [dot] se
+46 709298524
Collaborating researchers
Ove Jonsson (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) - slu.se
Jenny Kreuger (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) - slu.se
In 2018, Sweden saw its most extreme wildfire season in modern history. Climate warming is predicted to increase the frequency of extreme fire seasons, yet knowledge on fire impacts on the Eurasian forests and their feedback on climate is scarce, particularly for early post-fire regeneration years. This creates a large uncertainty in carbon budgets, impairs climate model predictions and undermines identification of post-fire management that best supports Swedish climate targets and the Paris Agreement.
We address these gaps by examining Sweden’s largest wildfire of 2018. With BECC guest researcher and Formas funding, we capture effects of common and alternative forest-management approaches on the forest's greenhouse gas (GHG) budget since the critical first post-fire year. This BECC project will considerably extend ongoing research. We link responses across disciplines, from soil microbial ecology, biogeochemistry, micrometeorology to biodiversity, and bridge across spatial scales from microbial growth rates and gross nutrient mineralisation rates to ecosystem GHG emissions and uptake. We quantify the impact of forest management on the "microbial pump", nutrient limitation, nutrient bioavailability, and biodiversity resilience, and relate the findings to soil and ecosystem GHG exchanges to identify key ecological drivers for above- and belowground forest ecosystem recovery.
Contact
Project leader
Natascha Kljun - portal.research.lu.se
Centre for Environmental and Climate Science
natascha [dot] kljun [at] cec [dot] lu [dot] se
+46 761357744
Collaborating researchers
Louise C Andresen (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg) - gu.se
Johannes Rousk (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Johan Ekroos (Centre for Environmental and Climate Science) - portal.research.lu.se
BECC Action Groups
Action Groups are short-term activities that address a particular issue, problem, knowledge gap or opportunity relevant to fulfilling research, education, outreach or societal impact objectives of BECC.
START: 2020
Instrumental observations of climate and environmental variables are often comparably short and representative of local settings. In the context of global warming and other recent environmental changes the short time span of instrumental records can make it difficult to quantify the impacts of human-induced changes since the industrial revolution. Environmental and climate reconstructions based on palaeo-ecological and geochemical proxy data from natural archives can be of high resolution (even seasonal) and of very high quality. Such records can range from site-specific reconstructions to gridded reconstructions on regional to global scales. Proxy records and other pre-instrumental data effectively provide a baseline as a backdrop for the current changes, not only as estimates of preindustrial levels, but also provide information on changes in variability and spatial patterns. The most realistic time frame to explore is the past millennium, the period from which high-resolution proxy records, historical accounts and museum collections are most abundant.
With this action group we aim to extend the temporal perspective of BECC-relevant research to achieve enhanced mechanistic understanding and quantification of recent and future dynamics of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Focus will be placed on environmental and climate change across a range of scales in both space and time to foster new collaborations and research proposals. We will inform BECC-affiliated working groups of the potential of using pre-instrumental records through seminars and workshops. A specific aim is to cast a report outlining the added value of, as well as the methods involved in, pre-instrumental approaches to inform environmental and climate change. The report will be based on topics and methods mastered by the LU and GU BECC researchers active in the action group and can form the
basis of a review paper.
Contact
Coordinator
Dan Hammarlund (Department of Geology) - portal.research.lu.se
Collaborating researchers
Jesper Sjolte (Department of Geology) - portal.research.lu.se
Johannes Edvardsson (Department of Geology) - portal.research.lu.se
Helena Filipsson (Department of Geology) - portal.research.lu.se
Karl Ljung (Department of Geology) - portal.research.lu.se
Anna Runemark (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Deliang Chen (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg) - gu.se
Hans W Linderholm (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg) - gu.se
START: 2021
Global biodiversity is in decline due to human land use, exploitation, and climate change. To understand whether our forthcoming actions and policy implementation counteract this alarming trend, it is paramount to closely follow the state of biodiversity at regional and global scales. The monitoring of species from the DNA they leave behind, so called ‘environmental DNA’ (eDNA) has emerged as one of the most powerful tools at our disposal. Environmental DNA refers to all DNA contained in an environmental sample, including whole microorganisms, propagules such as pollen and spores as well extra-organismal DNA which has been shed by larger organisms. Collecting samples for eDNA is rapid, cost-effective and non-destructive. In combination with high-throughput sequencing, it is now possible to simultaneously detect thousands of species from complex environmental samples (by eDNA metabarcoding or shotgun metagenomics). Making eDNA a powerful tool and revolutionizing the detection of biodiversity in many ecosystems. The use of eDNA is rapidly growing: in terrestrial ecosystems flower swabs have been sequenced to study pollinator interactions, leaves to study ungulate browsers, blood meals to study vertebrate diversity, droppings to study diets, honey to study foraging behaviour of bees, or topsoil to measure mammal diversity.
The application of eDNA methods has huge potential to stimulate progress in research within BECC. While studying biodiversity is at the core of a large part of BECCs research, to date only few of us have tapped into the full potential of eDNA methods. The aim of this action group is to achieve competence and network building and serve as a kick-starter for the integration of modern eDNA methods in biodiversity research at BECC, and as such support ongoing projects and strengthen future applications and research.
Contact
Coordinator
Romana Salis (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Collaborating researchers
Fabian Roger (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Georgina Brennan (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Anna Persson (Centre for Environmental and Climate Sciences) - portal.research.lu.se
Niklas Wahlberg (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Dag Ahrén (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Magne Friberg (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Olof Hellgren (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Anders Nilsson (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
START: 2020
The overarching aim of the proposed action group is to seek an improved understanding of how landscape structure impacts plant-pollinator community structure and function, mediated through ecological interactions and functional-trait evolution. Such understanding is imperative for informing management strategies for maintaining pollination systems that underlie multiple ecosystem services. We argue that a major constraint on our ability to understand, predict, and prevent the consequences of current pollinator declines and subsequent service loss is limited knowledge about how ecological, evolutionary, and spatial processes interact. The importance of interacting eco-evolutionary and spatial processes for conservation are highlighted in recent literature. This calls for a better understanding of the mechanistic underpinning of these processes in the context of ecosystems services. Answering this call is, however, non-trivial. Eco-evolutionary feedbacks are difficult to study, making combined theoretical and empirical investigations across levels of biological organization (e.g. population- and community-level analysis) and across spatiotemporal scales essential. Expertise from different scientific fields within biology is also required. Evidence for evolutionary response to human-altered landscapes and domesticated species is accumulating. First, differences both in the landscape composition and in the traits of
domesticated species, compared with their wild ancestors, alter the selection pressures acting on wild species and result in evolutionary responses. While pesticide resistance is the most well-studied phenomenon, other evolutionary responses including host shifts, phenological shifts, and shifts in morphology and rate of development have been observed in response to interactions with domesticated crops. For example, experimental-evolution studies on seed beetles have shown differences between those reared on domesticated and wild plants, which led to reduced larval competition ability with potential important implications for interacting species. To date, there is little knowledge of the effects of such evolutionary responses on interactions with other wild organisms and communities. No clear methodological framework or suggested entry point to how such complexity can be studied holistically exists. With this in mind, our specific aim is to synthesize the field, explicitly focusing on designing novel scientific avenues for studying the combined effect of eco-evolutionary and spatial processes in plant-pollinator systems ultimately affecting their structure and function. We embrace the idea that no single methodological approach will provide the required understanding but synergies among approaches will.
Contact
Coordinator
Mikael Pontarp (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Collaborating researchers
Øystein Opedal (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Anna Runemark (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Anna Persson (Centre for Environmental and Climate Sciences) - portal.research.lu.se
Magne Friberg (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Henrik Smith (Centre for Environmental and Climate Sciences) - portal.research.lu.se
START: 2020
The purpose of this Action Group is to launch an initiative within BECC that centres around the global loss of biodiversity and to what extent natural and domesticated populations will remain sustainable in light of increasing land-use demands from a growing human population and ongoing anthropogenic induced climate change.
We aim to close a knowledge gap related to the genomic effects and consequences of increasingly fragmented landscapes on natural and domesticated populations. Specifically, we aim to understanding how historical population demography and breeding designs will influence the viability of declining populations, and yield losses in economically important crops, in terms of loss of genomic variation and expression of the inbreeding load at different developmental stages.
Genomic causes and consequences of inbreeding in natural and domesticated populations — portal.research.lu.se
Contact
Coordinator
Bengt Hansson (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Department of Biology
bengt [dot] hansson [at] biol [dot] lu [dot] se
Collaborating researchers
Colin Olito (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Mark V. Brady (CEC) - portal.research.lu.se
Ola Olsson (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Magne Friberg (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Anna Runemark (Department of Biology - portal.research.lu.se
START: 2020
Boreal end hemiboreal forests are expected to be particularly exposed and vulnerable to climate change due to the extreme changes predicted for areas at high latitudes in the northern hemisphere. In addition, boreal and hemiboreal forests in Europe are traditionally managed as monospecific even-aged coniferous forests which are highly vulnerable to environmental changes. This vulnerability calls for action to better understand the risks connected to climate change and the barriers to forest management change in order to improve the resilience of boreal
and hemiboreal forests by implementing adaptation and mitigation forest management strategies based on the gained knowledge.
The aim of this action group (AG) is to foster collaboration between research groups in BECC to find solutions to increase resilience of boreal and hemiboreal forests. In particular, the AG wants to further develop research opportunities connecting experimental research and remote sensing to ecosystem
modelling and linking to research investigating social and cultural factors that influence forest management. Moreover, the AG will engage in transferring knowledge to stakeholders and the next generation of researchers.
Resilient forests - portal.research.lu.se
Contact
Coordinator
Giuliana Zanchi (Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science) - portal.research.lu.se
Collaborating researchers
Anna Maria Jönsson (Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science) - portal.research.lu.se
Johanna Alkan Olsson (Centre for Environmental and Climate Sciences) - portal.research.lu.se
Margarida Soares (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Natascha Kljun (Centre for Environmental an Climate Sciences - portal.research.lu.se
Virginia Garcia (Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Sciences) - portal.research.lu.se
By assembling a new group of scientists with complementary expertise, we identified in the developing of a research project (‘Understanding Arctic browning from macro to nano’) a lack of a review on nanoSIMS methodologies for imaging of i. amino acids and peptides in cells and their matrix (embedded in epoxy), ii. carbon and nitrogen in soil (freeze dried and gold embedded), and iii. cellular uptake of C and N in aquatic environment. This action group aims at bringing the nanoSIMS methodology into the terrestrial ecosystem context of carbon and nutrient cycling. We will provide a review paper, clarifying how the imaging technique can be used for calculating the rates of: depolymerization, amino acid mineralization, and amino acid consumption by plant root-, bacterial and fungal cells in soil, and how to determine a factor of amino acid adsorption to soil particles. In addition we will provide advice for the method on replication, time steps, sensitivity of the method and amount of isotope labelled C and N.
Contact
Coordinator
Louise C Andresen (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg) - gu.se
START: 2020
There is an increasing need for practical strategies that effectively reduce and prevent negative impacts from climate change on biodiversity, hereafter referred to as adaptation strategies for biodiversity. To achieve effective adaptation strategies for biodiversity, there is a need to better understand how outcomes are affected by biophysical context (e.g. species' mobility and adaptability to climate change, if the focus is on genetic, functional or species diversity), social context (e.g. stakeholders' attitude, behavior and engagement, and impacts on livelihood), and their interaction.
Aim: to better understand how social-ecological context matters for the outcomes of adaptation strategies for terrestrial biodiversity. This will be achieved through knowledge exchange and creation during the planned workshop (Activity 1), in the network that the AG creates with BECC researchers from different research fields and an expert group consisting of invited external researchers and representatives from local and regional authorities, and by a quantitative review and synthesis assessing the published literature on existing adaptation strategies for biodiversity and how they have been studied (Activity 2).
Social and ecological context of climate change adaptation for biodiversity - portal.research.lu.se
Contact
Coordinator
William Sidemo Holm - (Centre for Environmental and Climate Sciences) - portal.research.lu.se
Collaborating researchers
Kimberly Nicholas (LUCSUS) - portal.research.lu.se
Nils Droste (Department of Political Science) - portal.research.lu.se
Pål Axel Olsson (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Jessica Coria (Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg) - gu.se
START: 2020
It is now becoming evident that climate change disturbs biogeochemical processes and affects both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. In order to better understand whether these disturbances will further accelerate or mitigate climate change we need to know key influencing factors and integrate them over different scales (time and space) and environments (terrestrial and aquatic) 1. Vibrational (micro)spectroscopy techniques provide possibility to address this need by studying structural properties and responses of sample systems 2.
The existing Vibrational (micro)spectroscopy labs within Mbio Microscopy Facility, Lund University have been
equipped through funds granted to Centre of Environmental and Climate Science (CEC) and have recently been complemented with several new instruments, including a super-resolution infrared imaging microscope. It is important that researchers within BECC know and take advantage of the potential provided by the (micro)spectroscopy techniques and that the obtained results are integrated to constitute a bigger picture of the importance and relationship between various biogeochemical processes within terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.
Therefore, the aim of the AG is (1) to identify common knowledge-gaps within microscale biogeochemistry, and the best approaches to tackle them by bringing together a network of researchers of different expertise. The AG will further (2) provide introduction and training on the use of the novel vibrational (micro)spectroscopy techniques and related data analysis approaches. This, added to the toolbox of other analytical methods conventionally used within the fields, will ensure that more comprehensive results are obtained. The routines and protocols created in the course of AG activities will also create a base and serve a broad user community within and outside BECC. Ultimately, the AG will initiate a vibrational spectroscopy hub with research focused on (but not limited to) biogeochemistry and carbon cycle. Its aim is to connect people with common methodological and research interests. We expect that the knowledge generated during continuous communication between AG researchers, on common research questions and using similar methods, in the long term, will provide insight on the importance of various biogeochemical processes and point to the need for them to be implemented in ecosystem models.
ECOSPEC - portal.research.lu.se
Contact
Coordinator
Milda Pucetaite (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Collaborating researchers
Viktoriia Meklesh (Centre for Environmental and Climate Sciences) - portal.research.lu.se
Per Persson (Centre for Environmental and Climate Sciences) - portal.research.lu.se
Edith Hammer (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Dimitrios Floudas (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Michiel Op de Beeck (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Albert Brangarí (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Margarida Soares (Department of Biology) - portal.research.lu.se
Helena Filipsson (Department of Geology) - portal.research.lu.se
Martin Berggren (Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Sciences) - portal.research.lu.se
Mats Björkman (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg) - gu.se
Louise C Andresen (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Gothenburg) - gu.se