Abstract
Based on a better understanding of terrestrial and freshwater
biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, ALARM will develop and test
methods and protocols for the assessment of large-scale environmental
risks in order to minimise negative direct and indirect human impacts.
Research focuses on the assessment and forecast of changes in
biodiversity and in the structure, function, and dynamics of
ecosystems. This relates to ecosystem services in the broadest sense
including the relationships between society, the economy and
biodiversity. In particular, risks to biodiversity will be assessed
that arise from climate change, environmental chemicals, biological
invasions and pollinator loss in the context of current and potential
future European socio-economic development options and their
respective land use patterns. There are an increasing number of case
studies on the environmental risks from each of these impacts. This is
yielding an improved understanding on how these risks act individually
and affect living systems. However, the knowledge on how they act in
concert is poor and ALARM will be the first research initiative with
the critical mass needed to deal with such aspects of combined impacts
and their consequences. Risk assessments in ALARM will be
hierarchical and examine a range of organisational (genes, species,
ecosystems), temporal (seasonal, annual, decadal) and spatial scales
(habitat, region, continent) determined by the appropriate resolution
of current case studies and databases. Socio-economics is a
cross-cutting theme that will contribute to the integration of
driver-specific risk assessment methods, develop instruments to
communicate risks to biodiversity end users and, will indicate policy
options to mitigate such risks.
The ALARM consortium is co-ordinated by the Helmholtz-Centre UFZ -
Centre for Environmental Research Leipzig-Halle. It combines the
expertise of 54 partners from 26 countries (19 EU, Romania, Bulgaria,
Israel, Switzerland, Russia, Chile and Argentina). ALARM encompasses 7
small or medium sized enterprises (SMEs) as full partners with central
responsibilities and with a share of >10% of the project resources.
Year
2005
Category
Refereed journal