Global biodiversity loss and anthropogenic climate change are two of the major challenges humanity faces today. Human land use is a key driver of both crises, so land use decisions play a pivotal role in tackling these challenges. Identifying opportunities to move the land use system towards sustainability requires a deep understanding of the manifold interactions between land use, the climate system and the ecosystem. For example, research focusing on the impacts of climate change on ecosystems can only provide limited insights if farmers’ adaptations – whether by planting new crops, adopting agroforestry, or using land for photovoltaic (PV) installations – can significantly affect ecosystems. Understanding these interactions is critical for designing policies that exploit synergies and avoid trade-offs under the conditions of climate change, yet it remains one of the key research gaps for sustainable land use.
The newly established research group "MOTION-CB: Modelling Interactions for Sustainable Land Use Transformation - Climate Change and Biodiversity" investigates how the land use system can be transformed to tackle both climate change and biodiversity loss by developing an innovative interdisciplinary research approach. As part of the project, two doctoral students and two postdocs work in an interdisciplinary team addressing key questions in land use transformation. The overall novelty of the research conducted in MOTION-CB lies in accounting for interactions between climate change, land use, and ecosystems to identify policy synergies and trade-offs. This represents a major research gap that needs to be filled to tackle the biodiversity and climate crises. To develop these insights, we integrate the work conducted in three main work packages:
- Empirical land use model: MOTION-CB will use choice modelling to understand how farmers adapt their land use in response to climate change. This research will feed into integrated modelling approaches.
- Multi-objective ecosystem model: MOTION-CB will develop models to assess ecosystem services and biodiversity. This entails conceptual and methodological advances of current climate-ecological-economic models.
- Optimal decisions: collaborations, uncertainty, and policy: The project will explore how existing and novel policies affect land use and ecosystems in the context of climate change. This will involve the use of cooperative and non-cooperative game theory to model decision-making under uncertainty.
The aim of MOTION-CB is to conduct policy-relevant research by identifying synergies and trade-offs that can improve our management of ecosystems for biodiversity and climate mitigation. Given the rapid rate of biodiversity loss and the increasing difficulty of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, this research is urgent.
The research group is financed through the Postdoc Network Brandenburg.
