Jim Harris, Cranfield University: New Research Set to Unlock Nature Mysteries and Tackle Biodiversity Crisis

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Excerpt: 

• Innovative partnership project will unpick and examine the essential elements required for ecosystem restoration
• Results will provide essential building blocks for landscape restoration
• 100 research sites will be involved including the Knepp Estate, South Downs and Stonehenge landscape
• Four year project will be funded by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)

A four-year research project has been launched to help tackle the biodiversity crisis by identifying how the UK’s most precious woodland and meadow habitats can be successfully restored by looking at how all the different plants, animals and other organisms in ecosystems work together.

The £2 million project, funded by Natural Environment Research Council, aims to reverse habitat loss and the degradation of land caused by agricultural intensification, urban development, climate change and pollution.

It will look at how these ecosystems knit together through complex individual processes like nutrient cycling, carbon capture and pollination – rather than simply looking at the presence and number of particular species. This is an innovative approach to understanding ecosystem processes and will have major implications for ecological restoration target-setting.

The research is due to get under way at over 100 meadow and woodland sites currently in the process of being restored across the country, including the Knepp Estate, South Downs and Stonehenge landscape, as well as at heavily degraded landscapes such as mining and quarry sites and intensively farmed agricultural land.

The partnership project is led by Cranfield University including the National Trust, Stirling University, the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) and Forest Research.

It hopes to provide evidence to improve the effectiveness of ecosystem restoration, using woodlands[1] and meadows[2] as examples of some of our most heavily ecologically degraded environments.

The research will help conservationists and those involved in restoration ensure interventions such as tree planting or re-introducing species are made to maximum benefit.

Professor Jim Harris of Cranfield University, Lead Principal Investigator for the project, said: “Improving our ability to restore functional ecosystems is crucial to ensuring we restore nature and achieve net gain in line with Government plans ‘to be the first generation to leave the environment in a better state than we found it.

“We are trying to understand how the nuts, bolts and cogs of the ecosystems that we are interested in reassemble and function, and whether this can be done quickly – or whether we need a lot of patience with Mother Nature – who you simply cannot fool.”