Professor Ian Donohue

Summary

We will develop a smart environmental monitoring system that will bring about a revolution in biodiversity quantification by delivering and interpreting dynamic high resolution biodiversity data in real time. We will develop and integrate acoustic, visual and mm-wave all-weather radar sensors, with processing and interpretation using AI species-recognition and functional diversity tools, to address translation of information from landscapes and animals via digital means to human understanding. Our project will bring about a step-change in environmental monitoring, transforming data resolution and quality, while addressing explicitly what is lost and gained through digital translation from animal to human understanding.

Funding Agency

Kinsella Award (Philanthropy, Trinity Foundation)

Person Months

192

Summary

Our partnership brings together world-leading researchers and the key players in the Irish wind energy sector to add significant value to green renewable energy and enhance its competitiveness through developing the template and tools needed to optimise land management and the delivery of natural capital co-benefits from onshore wind farms.

Funding Agency

SFI

Programme

MaREI, The SFI Research Centre for Energy, Climate and Marine Research and Innovation

Project Type

Collaborative Cost-Share Project

Person Months

156

Summary

Ecosystems worldwide are being increasingly affected by a multitude of components of human-induced global environmental change, including land-use change, climate change, habitat loss and nutrient enrichment of both land and water. This is causing species to go extinct at rates many thousands of times above background levels, undermining even further the capacity of biological communities to cope with, and recover from, disturbances (i.e. their stability). However, we know remarkably little about how these disturbances alter the many different components of ecological stability and less still about the stability of ecosystem functioning and services - respectively, the processes or jobs performed by ecosystems, many of which are utilised directly by humanity, and the goods and services we receive from ecosystems. This project will combine development of new theory, experimental work in the field and large-scale global analyses of ecosystems in collaboration with a global network of scientists, to further our knowledge of how ecosystems respond to and recover from disturbances. By disturbing systems in ways that mimic global change (e.g. by increasing temperature to simulate predicted warming), we can tease apart what makes ecosystems stable or why some may be more suscpetible to collapse, as well as when ecosystems are able to produce the services that humanity relies on. Only by combining different approaches across scales from microorganisms to global systems, and drawing on knowledge of experts from a range of fields, can we begin to gain a more complete understanding of what makes ecosystems stable, and ultimately what might drive them to collapse in our uncertain but increasingly threatened world.

Funding Agency

Irish Research Council

Programme

Postgraduate Research Scholarship

Person Months

48

Summary

In September 2015 the Member States of the United Nations agreed upon Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that will drive the global political agenda to 2030. The 17 Goals go from "Eradicate Poverty" to "Gender Equality" and "Climate Action". Each Goal splits up into several Targets, and progresses towards each Target will be monitored by a set of indicators. At the global level, in total, 230 Indicators will be used to assess the level of achievement of 169 Targets within 15 years. In the EU, a list of approximately 100 indicators will be identified to monitor EU progress towards SDGs. And at country level, separate indicators are also in some cases being identified. This large amount of data will be difficult to interpret, with the risk that the SDGs will provide diluted guidance at best. The aim of DISTINCT (DIstill SusTainability INdiCaTors) is to perform statistically advanced analyses that will evaluate the general level of sustainability of the countries of the world, with a special focus on Europe. The project has four main objectives: 1. Enhance feasibility of the SDGs: screen data availability and assess the accuracy of the methodologies used to calculate the different indicators. 2. Maximize information content of the SDGs: detect the minimum set of meaningful indicators that distil the maximum amount of information. 3. Produce options and guidelines for policymaking: evaluate and list combinations of policy options that can achieve multiple goals simultaneously. 4. Generate impact and awareness: through an effective communication plan for a general audience and link effectively to solid global network of top-level experts. DISTINCT will have important policy and measuring impacts, highlighting the leading role of the EU in the UN agenda for Sustainable Development. The fellow will be supervised by and collaborate with the Partnerships and Networks Programme which leads the SDG work of the European Environment Agency (EEA), and world leaders in Sustainability Science.

Funding Agency

EU-H2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie and Irish Research Council

Programme

CAROLINE

Project Type

Research Fellowship

Summary

Human actions are altering the relative availability of elements in ecosystems throughout the globe. While it is known that changes in nutrient availability can alter ecological processes, and that the relative availability of different nutrients (i.e. stoichiometry) determines ecosystem productivity, little is known about how differential shifts in relative nutrient availability alters the stability of biological communities. Recent research led by the research team has demonstrated that variability in traits within even a single species can determine the structure and stability of entire ecosystems. This is because the effects of trait-based shifts in interactions between species can propagate throughout entire ecological networks, altering the capacity of ecosystems to resist and recover from disturbances. There is mounting evidence that the degree of elemental homeostasis, the ability of organisms to maintain constant elemental composition regardless of external variations, varies both within and among species. This indicates that variation in this key biological trait has the potential to moderate the stability of whole ecosystems. Despite a rich literature on how consumer nutrient content changes as a function of food stoichiometry, the role of stoichiometry in important ecological phenomena such as population stability remains very poorly understood. The aim of this project is to evaluate how the stability of consumer species is (1) affected by the stoichiometry of their food and (2) by the extent of internal stoichiometric homeostasis. This study will advance our understanding of how human-induced shifts in nutrient ratios impact the stability of ecosystems, with important implications for environmental management.

Funding Agency

Irish Research Council

Programme

Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme