SCALES employs a variety of methods and models, adapted to the projects’ diverse components. It will apply recent methodological advances to new and existing data and develop new methods and approaches for innovative analyses of biodiversity processes and data across scales, of how these processes interact across scales and affect biodiversity. It will assess and model the scaling properties of natural and anthropogenic processes and the resulting scale-dependencies of the impacts of these pressures on various levels of biodiversity from genes to ecosystem functions.
To allow generalizations of the ecological assessments beyond the organisms studied, we will classify them according to key biological characteristics using and expanding existing trait data-bases. We will further evaluate the effectiveness of management and policy responses to biodiversity loss in terms of their scale-relevance by analysing policy documents and interviewing key actors. We will merge and test the most promising approaches, methods, and policy instruments in EU-wide and regional case studies, focusing on UK, Finland, Poland, France, and Greece as focal regions to account for the ecological and societal variability and different histories of policies related to biodiversity conservation across Europe.
Data compilation and communication employ state-of-the-art IT for gathering, storing, and presenting data, information, and results through advanced computer based portals. We will provide the results and recommendations of SCALES as input into continuous science-policy dialogues on the national and EU-level, allowing us to support biodiversity policy and management and to adapt our work to new policy needs arising in the course of the project as far as possible.
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