Special Talk Explores Environmental Futures through New Models

Join us for a presentation by Professor Henrique Pereira from iDiv-Germany on the BES SIM 2 project at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 18. at River Road room 325.

Topic

The first biodiversity and ecosystem services scenario based model intercomparision found limitations with existing scenarios and models. Existing scenarios such as SSPs/RCPs do not explore all the policy options for positive environmental futures. In addition, large uncertainties exist in modelling the combined impacts of land-use and climate change. Here we will present a new model intercomparision project being carried out with a novel set of scenarios, the Nature Futures, and a wider range of models, several of them recently revised, the BES SIM 2. The Nature Futures is a new generation of scenarios being developed around positive futures for nature and people, in response to IPBES needs. A set of global narratives has been recently developed for three scenarios: Nature for Nature, Nature for Society, and Nature as Culture. We will present these narratives and how they are being used to develop land-use projections at the global and sub-global scales using a range of land-use and IAM models. We will then present the protocol being developed to run biodiversity and ecosystem services models using these land-use projections.
 

Speaker

Henrique Miguel Pereira is the Professor of Biodiversity Conservation at iDiv - German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg and an Invited Professor at InBio, Universidade do Porto (Portugal). Henrique Pereira is an expert on biodiversity change and science-policy, having authored more than one hundred journal articles. He has worked both as a researcher and as a practitioner, having served as the Director of Peneda-Gerês National Park and as the coordinator of the Portugal Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.  He was the co-Chair of the Biodiversity Observation Network of the Group on Earth Observations (2014-2020) and of the Expert Group on Scenarios and Models from the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (2017-2019). He recently lead EuropaBON, a project that designed a biodiversity monitoring system for Europe.