QUEST Theme 3: The implications of global environmental changes for the sustainable use of resources
Human
activities depend on marketed and non-marketed "services" provided by the terrestrial and marine
biosphere. There is an urgent need to understand the responses of ecosystem services to a changing
environment and to quantify the implications of such changes for human activities in a globally consistent
way. Typical issues for QUEST therefore include:
- The consequences of a changing climate for global patterns of freshwater availability, taking into
account potential changes in demand.
- The consequences of a changing environment for global patterns of agriculture and forestry,
taking into account economic drivers and their response to changes in supply.
- The degree of threat posed to global biodiversity by a rapidly changing climate, and the potential
effectiveness of strategies to mitigate the loss of biodiversity due to changes in climate and land
use.
- The potential efficacy and cost-effectiveness of measures designed to mitigate global climate
change through terrestrial and marine ecosystem management.
Projects that have been funded in this theme are:
- QUEST GSI: Global- scale impacts of climate change: an integrated multi-sectoral assessment
- QUATERMASS: Quantifying the potential of terrestrial biomass to mitigate climate change
- JIFor: Joint Implementation initiative for forestry-based climate mitigation
- QUEST Fish: Predicting impacts and consequences of climate change on fisheries
- FireMAFS: Fire Modelling and Forecasting System
Details of NERC funded applications for this theme are available HERE.
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