DAAD PRIME research grant for Reinhard Prestele
Reinhard Prestele has received a positive decision on his DAAD PRIME (Postdoctoral Researchers International Mobility Experience) proposal ‘Integrating process-based land use and ecological models to assess global change impacts on European bumblebees and pollination service’. The 18-month project, which starts in autumn this year, will be carried out in close collaboration with the University of Aberdeen, including a research stay of several month at the partner institute. In his PRIME project, Reinhard will work on the integration of RangeShiftR, an individual-based model of species ecology developed at the University of Aberdeen with the land-use modeling framework CRAFTY developed and maintained in the LUC group. This new tool will then be used to study the bidirectional interactions between bumblebee dynamics and agricultural human decision making. Bumblebees are amongst the most important pollinators of fruit and vegetable crops, but are known to be threatened by agricultural intensification and climate change. To date, however, it is not well understood how exactly land-use and climate change affect the future distribution of bumblebees and how such changes may alter pollination services that agricultural production relies on. One major reason for this lack of knowledge is the insufficient representation of bumblebee habitat and bumblebee ecology in state-of-the-art simulation models, which this project aims to improve. The new model will eventually be used to explore various land-management strategies and conservation policies that aim at minimizing the risks to bumblebees under future global change pressures, both at UK and European scales.
More information on PRIME: https://www.daad.de/en/study-and-research-in-germany/scholarships/postdoctoral-researchers-international-mobility-experience/
More information on RangeShiftR: https://rangeshifter.github.io/
More information on CRAFTY: https://landchange.imk-ifu.kit.edu/CRAFTY
