After a one-year preparatory funding phase, the transdisciplinary research project ”Co-Design of ecologically and economically efficient policy instruments and measures for the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services in cultural landscapes” (acronym: ECO²SCAPE), coordinated by the  Chair of Computational Landscape Ecology (Faculty of Environmental Sciences), has now been selected for funding together with 16 other projects in the funding measure “Valuation and preservation of biodiversity in politics, economy, and society” (in short: “BiodiWert”) of the BMBF Research Initiative for the Conservation of Biodiversity (FEdA).

The ECO²SCAPE consortium is scientifically coordinated by Prof. Dr. Anna Cord (Chair of Computational Landscape Ecology). Prof. Björn Andres (Chair of Machine Learning for Computer Vision) as well as other experts from TU Dresden with a background in biogeography, environmental sciences, political science and computer science are also members of the project team. External project partners are the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, the Leibniz Center for Agricultural Landscape Research e.V., the Landscape Conservation Association Northwest Saxony e.V. and National Natural Landscapes e.V.

The loss of biodiversity is progressing at a rapid pace - with high societal costs: Biodiversity is the basis for various ecosystem services and thus essential for human well-being. The intensification of agriculture is considered to be one of the most important drivers of biodiversity decline in Germany. Despite some partial successes, there is a lack of broad implementation of measures to protect biodiversity. This is where ECO²SCAPE comes in: In the project, new, practical approaches and measures for the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services are developed together with farmers in the model region “Vereinigte Mulde” near Leipzig, piloted and scientifically accompanied by an interdisciplinary team. The goal is to design ecologically effective and economically efficient measures that simultaneously aim at the broadest possible acceptance by farmers and society. Using newly developed monitoring methods, including those based on machine learning, these measures will be examined not only in terms of their impact on specific areas, but also at the landscape level. The underlying research approach combines innovative methods from the fields of artificial intelligence, institutional economic instrument analysis, environmental economics, ecological-economic modeling and software development. The ECO²SCAPE consortium is funded with a total of 2 million euros for three years (October 2021 to September 2024).

Contact: Prof. Dr. Anna Cord, Chair of Computational Landscape Ecology