OVERVIEW

The core objective of the modelling theme is to develop tools that can help understand the implications of landscape management options. While different drivers, services, interactions, and beneficiaries will feature across our core working landscapes, we develop common methods to address fundamental aspects ecosystem complexity and document how populations benefit from ecosystem service flows. These are often absent from existing ES models and frameworks.

CHALLENGES FACING MODELLING

• Choosing which aspects of ecosystem complexity to incorporate into modeling, and the level of complexity
• Linking communities to the ecosystems upon which they depend​​

• Modeling distal and tele-coupled connections between the environment and people
• Building on innovative modeling work happening across the world​​

KEY CONCEPTS

• Ecosystem complexity
• Social-Ecological Systems / Coupled human-natural systems
• Ecosystem service dependency

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

1. Advance the frontiers of ecosystem services modelling by integrating core components system complexity – e.g., non-linearities, feedbacks, teleconnections, and landscape legacies – into ecosystem service production models.
2. Integrate communities into models to better account for how ecosystem service flows are captured by human beneficiaries on the landscape. We aim to bring these two research objectives together into a coupled framework that can reliably and accurately predict and understand the implications of landscape management decisions.

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EXPECTED OUTCOMES

1. Develop a generalized model that is applicable to any Canadian landscape using publicly available data suitable for higher-level analysis.
2. Develop landscape-specific models for a select number of our working landscapes using landscape-specific data to address more specific problems.

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​FOR RESEARCH QUESTIONS, PLEASE CONTACT:​

Brian E. Robinson, McGill University
brian.e.robinson@mcgill.ca  -  514-398-3453  -  website  -  twitter:@brianer

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THEME 2 TEAM LEADS

LAEL PARROTT

BRIAN E. ROBINSON

Meet the full team