Open Knowledge Exchange (KE) Fellowships - Facilitating the application of decision support tools for habitat creation

One of the biggest challenges for society in the 21st century will be to reconcile competing demands on land use while avoiding environmental degradation. Supplies of food, fresh water and energy and overall quality of life depend on the health of ecosystems, which are threatened by short-sighted land management practices and climate change. Species and ecosystems have limited capacity to survive climate change, especially in industrialised landscapes where natural habitats are fragmented, populations are small, and it is difficult for species to colonise sites that are newly climatically suitable.

In response to this challenge, many organisations are getting involved in ecosystem restoration, and aim to build a functioning ecological network which will be resilient to future shocks. Existing wildlife sites will form the backbone of this network, but its completion requires coordinated action on a vast spatial scale, involving a hugely diverse body of land users and landowners. Decision support tools can be invaluable to synthesise complex, spatial data and help to prioritise limited resources. There are various tools and sources of data available for informing landscape scale conservation and a number stem from NERC-funded science. In particular, computational network models can show how different habitat arrangements might maximise connectivity or flow through the landscape. One example of this is the NERC-funded Condatis software developed at the University of Liverpool. Getting informative outputs from such models requires accurate inputs, in the form of maps of habitat and restoration potential, and species traits. The UK has enviable collections of environmental and species data, much funded by NERC, but it can be complex to access and process.

The Condatis project and other habitat network models have catalysed great enthusiasm and support from stakeholders. However, barriers to uptake of the best tools have been identified, including a lack of plain English documentation, confusion about which software to use in which case, a lack of accessible data and a lack of completed case studies showing outputs successfully implemented on the ground. Limited time and resources within landscape scale projects is a compounding issue. This project will build a network for practical knowledge exchange between researchers and decision makers who influence habitat creation and restoration decisions in the UK and Europe.
The fellowship will focus firstly on improving understanding of the existing habitat network modelling tools and increasing awareness of them. An online community will be fostered by creation of a website, forum and social media. Documentation based on user feedback will condense the lessons learned from successful projects and accelerate the learning curve for new users. Secondly, partners will help to identify sources of species and habitat data, and explore ways of delivering easier access to these data for use in habitat network models. Thirdly, practical support will assist a small number of case study landscape-scale initiatives using Condatis, to achieve results on the ground. These case studies will be prepared as worked examples to guide new users and build confidence in Condatis as a decision making tool.

As a result of this fellowship, many relevant end-users will be better equipped to prioritise actions within habitat networks. The aim is that this type of analysis will become mainstream within conservation organisations, rather than specialised to a handful of individuals within organisations willing to invest months in analytical work. If this happens, more justifiable real-world decisions can be made with minimal overheads of time and money. The ultimate result will be that species and ecological functions are maintained in habitat networks that will be resilient for generations to come, contributing to multiple aspects of human prosperity.