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Securing the conservation of biodiversity across administrative levels and spatial, temporal, and ecological scales

Activity Code: ENV.2008.2.1.4.4.
Coordinator: Dr Klaus Henle, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ

Abstract:

Our capacity to effectively sustain biodiversity across spatial and temporal scales is an essential component of European environmental sustainability. Anthropogenic and environmental pressures on biodiversity act differently at different scales. Consequently, effective conservation responses to these threats must explicitly consider the scale at which effects occur, and therefore it is crucial that administrative levels and planning scales match the relevant biological scales.

The SCALES project will provide the scientific and policy research needed to guide scale-dependent management actions. It will assess and model the scaling properties of natural and anthropogenic processes and the resulting scale-dependencies of the impacts of these pressures on various levels of biodiversity from genes to ecosystem functions. To facilitate these assessment methods for up-scaling and downscaling biodiversity data will be reviewed and improved. SCALES will further evaluate the effectiveness of management and policy responses to biodiversity loss in terms of their scale-relevance and will develop new tools for matching their scales to relevant biological scales.

Finally, a resulting methodological and policy framework for enhancing the effectiveness of European biodiversity conservation across scales will be developed and tested. This framework focuses on networks of protected areas and regional connectivity. This framework will be disseminated to a wide range of relevant users via a web based support tool kit (SCALE-TOOL) and by means of further dissemination channels, such as conferences, publications, and the mass media.

Project Details:

Start Date: 01.05.2009
End Date: 31.07.2014
EU Contribution: 7 Mio. Euro
Total Costs: 9.99 Mio. Euro
Funding Scheme: Large-scale integrating project 
Administrative Contact Person: Annette Schmidt, annette.schmidt@ufz.de
Scientific Coordinator: Dr Klaus Henle, Klaus.Henle@ufz.de 
Project Website:http://www.scales-project.net/

Partners:

  • Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Germany
  • Vilniaus Universiteto Ekologijos Institutas, Lithuania
  • Centre Tecnologic Forestal de Catalunya, Spain
  • The University of Queensland, Australia
  • Median SCP, Spain
  • Pensoft Publishers Ltd, Bulgaria
  • Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, France
  • Tartu Ulikool, Estonia
  • Institute for European Environmental Policy London, United Kingdom
  • Univerzita Karlova vPraze, Czech Republic
  • University of the Aegean Research Unit, Greece
  • Suomen Ymparistokeskus, Finland
  • Debreceni Egyetem, Hungary
  • Center za Kartografijo Favne in Flore Zavod, Slovenia
  • Uniwersytet Jagiellonski, Poland
  • Helsingin Yliopisto, Finland
  • Universität Bern, Switzerland
  • Fundacao da Faculdade de Ciencas e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
  • Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France
  • Lunds Universitet, Sweden
  • Stiftelsen Norsk Institutt for Naturforskning, Norway
  • The University of Reading, United Kingdom
  • Aristotelio Panepistimio Thessalonikis, Greece
  • University of Leeds, United Kingdom
  • Natural Environment Research Council, United Kingdom
  • Sveriges Lantbruskuniversitet, Sweden
  • Universität Bayreuth, Germany