[Call for proposals FRB-MTE-OFB 2021] Impacts on terrestrial biodiversity in the Anthropocene

Biodiversity is declining at an increasingly alarming rate and human activities, directly and indirectly, synergistically or antagonistically, are influencing this decline which must be halted. However, precisely quantifying the impacts of human activities still remains complex because, even if the causes are generally known and agreed upon, it is still difficult to detail them and to measure the precise consequences and their interactive effects, in time and space.

As part of the implementation of the national “terrestrial biodiversity monitoring” programme carried out by the French Biodiversity Office (OFB), which aims to measure, identify and monitor the influence of human activities on biodiversity and the best practices to be promoted, the Ministry of Ecological Transition (MTE) and the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) are launching a call for research projects on the “Impacts on terrestrial biodiversity in the Anthropocene “. The call aims to characterize the positive, negative or non-existent impacts of human activities and induced pressures on the state and dynamics of terrestrial biodiversity.

The results of the research funded by the programme should help to strengthen the actions of society as a whole, to halt the decline of biodiversity and promote sustainable human development. 

Projects should focus on at least one of these three themes:

• highlight new links between human pressures and the state of biodiversity;
• characterize the links between pressures and impacts using new data processing technologies, new indicators, new protocols, etc.;
• identify gaps in current monitoring (spatial distribution, temporal frequency, types of pressure, type of biodiversity).

Human activities and direct or indirect pressures that have implications for terrestrial biodiversity on a territorial scale will be considered (i.e. pressures that have global impacts, such as climate change, cannot be considered on their own, unless they are coupled with other pressures) and impacts that have a significant effect on biodiversity present on French national territory (metropolitan and ultra-marine).

This call for proposals will allow the funding of:

• 3 data SYNTHESIS projects of three years – these projects should develop syntheses of ideas and/or concepts, analyses of existing data, and should focus on factors affecting the state, evolution and dynamics of biodiversity.
• 4 to 6 one-year SYNERGY projects – these projects should provide complementary answers to a question that emerges from a research project that has been finalized or is underway, and should help stakeholders with indicators and practices to be promoted or abandoned to preserve biodiversity.
• 2 to 4 one-year SYSTEMATIC MAP projects – a preliminary step to the “systematic review”, these projects will have to focus on pressure-impact links related to human practices in order to highlight whether the impacts on biodiversity are well established or suffer from a lack of data or literature.