Wageningen UR BSc and MSc Project Database

Project properties
Title	Multiscale modeling of the service bundle of a wetland socio-ecosystem
Group	Farming Systems Ecology
Project type	internship
Credits	24-39
Supervisor(s)	Blair van Pelt Co-supervisors: C. Gaucherel & I. Geijzendorffer
Examiner(s)	TBD
Contact info	blair.vanpelt@wur.nl Cédric Gaucherel, gaucherel@cirad.fr 04 67 61 65 86
Begin date	2019/09/01
End date	2020/02/29
Description	Ecosystems are objects which remain poorly understood and their related ecosystem services often show a great complexity. One reason of such uncomfortable situation is that ecosystems usually combine a high diversity of (biotic, abiotic and anthropogenic) processes in deep interactions, at many scales simultaneously. Humans, having an extended impact on ecosystems and, in turn, beneficiating from their services, increase even more the functioning multiscale character of the whole (Bennett et al. 2015). One way to proceed consists in building integrated models able to explicit the multiscale interactions between the (often) large number of ecosystem components and their related services. This internship subject proposes exploring this way by borrowing models to theoretical computer sciences such as Petri nets (Pommereau 2010). They suggest representing ecosystem interactions and services as a qualitative (relational) network, and then handling this graph with a rigorous mathematical engine (Gaucherel et al. 2017). In this internship, we will explore embedded networks to cope with the multiscale/multilevel nature of socio-ecosystems. In a second step, the set of modeled states of the whole ecosystem exhibit various trajectories. Finally, it is possible to combine this exhaustive exploration of ecosystem trajectories to an optimization procedure selecting the most favorable trajectories according to some service related criteria (Lafond et al. 2017), and ultimately, to recommend them to stakeholders. In this internship, we wish to apply this qualitative model and its associated tools (called ECOSERV and already available (Gaucherel and Pommereau 2019)) to a realistic and human-scale socio-agro-ecosystem: the Camargue region, south of France. This wetland area gathers a large number of natural dynamics and human activities, thus combining into a multiscale ecosystem service bundle (Geijzendorffer et al. 2017). A detailed research project (INRA, Métaprogramme ECOSERV 2018-19) has recently been initiated for this purpose. Location: Montpellier Frequent trips to Tour de Valat Compensation: standard french compensation of 550 euros per month. Références Bennett, E. M., W. Cramer, A. Begossi, G. Cundill, S. Díaz, B. N. Egoh, I. R. Geijzendorffer, C. B. Krug, S. Lavorel, E. Lazos, L. Lebel, B. Martín-Lopez, P. Meyfroidt, H. A. Mooney, J. L. Nel, U. Pascual, K. Payet, N. Pérez Harguindeguy, G. D. Peterson, A.-H. Prieur-Richard, B. Reyers, P. Roebeling, R. Seppelt, M. Solan, P. Tschakert, T. Tscharntke, B. L. Turner II, P. H. Verburg, E. F. Viglizzo, P. C. L. White, and G. Woodward. 2015. Linking biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being: Three challenges for designing research for sustainability. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 14:76-85. Gaucherel, C. and F. Pommereau. 2019. Using Petri nets to exhaustively characterize the dynamics of an integrated ecosystem. Methods in Ecology and Evolution In press. Gaucherel, C., H. Théro, A. Puiseux, and V. Bonhomme. 2017. Understand ecosystem regime shifts by modelling ecosystem development using Boolean networks. Ecological Complexity 31:104-114. Geijzendorffer, I., E. Cohen-Shacham, A. F. Cord, W. Cramer, C. Guerra, and B. Martín-López. 2017. Ecosystem services in global sustainability policies. Environmental Science & Policy 74:40-48. Lafond, V., T. Cordonnier, M. Zhun, and B. Courbaud. 2017. Trade-offs and synergies between ecosystem services in unevenaged mountain forests: evidences using Pareto fronts. European Journal of Forest Research:10.1007/s10342-10016-11022-10343. Pommereau, F. 2010. Algebras of coloured Petri nets. Lambert Academic Publishing (LAP).
Used skills
Requirements	Background in ecology and/or agronomy with some skills in modeling (or maths, or computer sciences). At least, a good sensitivity and interest in theoretical and methodological issues.