All biomes of the world are increasingly influenced by global environmental changes, such as altered land and water use, atmospheric composition, climate, and urbanisation. A key contribution of NIOO is to enhance understanding on how global changes influence ecological interactions and how this alters densities and distributions of species, functioning of ecosystems and the sustainable delivery of ecosystem services and goods. Our aims are:

  • Study the scale at which global environmental change affects ecological systems.
  • Establish maximum rates of global environmental change to which the populations, communities and ecosystems can adapt.
  • Study the shape of the response curve by which ecosystems, communities and populations respond to global environmental change.
  • Develop models by which understanding of the functioning of ecological systems under global environmental change can be turned into prediction. 

 

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Jeff Harvey

Spotlight

A century of climate change, bringing ever higher temperatures. Life can be hard: what would you do to survive as a bird, plant or rodent? Try the new game Climate Pursuit to find out.

To experience climate change yourself, we have developed a game. The game is based on processes that are happening in reality. Of course it is also fun to do!