European and Taiwanese scientists
cooperate in resolving critical problems
in nature conservation
Scientists involved in
SCALES (Securing the Conservation of
biodiversity across Administrative
Levels and spatial, temporal, and
Ecological Scales), a large-scale
integrating research project funded by
the 7th Framework Program (FP7) of the
European Union, have identified several
critical issues in nature conservation
caused by mismatches between the scale
at which ecological processes take place
and those at which management and policy
decisions are made. The need for
implementation of scale-based approaches
in policy and management becomes urgent.
Similar problems exist
worldwide and can be resolved with joint
effort at a multi-scale, international
level. A team of Taiwanese scientists
from the National Taiwan University
(NTU) has joined the EU project SCALES
since 2011, and the first results of the
successful cooperation have been
presented at a dedicated SCALES meeting
held in Taipei on Taiwan, from 26th of
November to 1st of December, 2012.
Dr. Klaus Henle from the Helmholtz
Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ
in Leipzig, Germany and coordinator of
SCALES opened the discussion: "The
threats to nature have no borders, but
it is not sufficient to manage them just
by comparing the experience of the
researchers from different countries. It
is crucially important to experiment and
test one and the same methods and
practices in different biogeographical
regions, under different social and
cultural traditions".
Prof. Yu-Pin Lin from the National
Taiwan University (NTU), supported by
National Science Council of Taiwan
(ROC), added: "Scientists should be
cautious when proposing nature
conservation measures, because their
conclusions may be based on an
inappropriate scale. This is why the
SCALES team at NTU have put substantial
effort into producing a novel knowledge
and an array of web-based tools that
bridge this gap and reduce the risks of
errors when moving from local to
large-scale studies and conservation
practices both in EU and Asia. The tools
allow planners to make the collection
and analysis of monitoring data more
efficient and to identify the national
responsibilities of the different
countries for the conservation of
species, considering biogeographical and
global scales".
The cooperation in studying the problem
of scale in ecological research and
nature conservation will result in
proposing a set of best-practice
recommendations and novel approaches
with applicability under various
environmental and societal conditions.
Connectivity between remnants of natural
habitats must be more effectively
included in policy and planning, in
order to allow species to survive
through global change: if natural
habitats remain so fragmented, many
species simply will not be able to alter
their distributions with changing
environment.
The accumulated conservation practices
and recommendations will be summarized
in a SCALES Tool, a web-based
interactive platform that will
facilitate planning and decision-making.
The key recommendations will also be
summarized in a concise policy brief
that will be translated and distributed
in several European languages, as well
as in Chinese and Japanese.
from
http://www.scales-project.net/news.php?n=260
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