Environmentalists are looking for future scenarios for the environment

"If we want to protect ecosystems, we need to come up with scenarios for their future in different perspectives. The ability to forecast, however, is complicated by the fact that natural processes are accompanied by human impact - direct - such as hunting, or indirect - that climate change" - explained the organizer of the meeting, director of the Institute of Zoology, University of Life Sciences in Poznań, Prof. Piotr Tryjanowski.

The meeting held in Odolanów (Wielkopolska) was attended by approx. 25 scientists and students from Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Belarus and Romania. The main guest is Prof. Tibor Hartel, Hungarian scientist working in Transylvania (Romania).

"The challenge we set ourselves is to brainstorm. We take into account what might happen, and evaluate what is most and least likely to occur. Then we try to describe it. Ultimately, we will prepare four future scenarios for the environment, ranked in terms of likelihood and significance for nature" - explained the organizer.

The starting point for this type of discussion is the assumption that the various processes and phenomena form dense networks of relationships. These relationships are so complex that even a slight change in initial conditions can completely change the outcome.

This pattern applies to a variety of physical systems; its effect can be seen, for example, in chemical reactions or weather changes (when a small change in salinity in the North Atlantic results in large changes in temperature in different parts of the world). Recently, knowledge of deterministic chaos is also used in ecological studies. "We now know that many natural phenomena - which we thought were synchronous, for example, massive occurrence of rodents - are impossible to predict accurately. Moreover, we know that part of the environment strongly depends on whether the rodents occur on a massive scale, or not"- described Prof. Tryjanowski.

The more one problem is related to the other problems, the more serious scientists consider it. "You can say, for example, that in this chaotic world a problem for conservation and ecology is the lack of money. When we have the money, we can conduct research, and in their absence - we can’t. Why is research important? Because when we understand the system, we will know where its sensitive point is, and where we should direct resources for protection" - he explained.

Scientists can also try to predict remote environmental consequences of the fact that people increasingly rely on new technologies. Even today, you can see changes in the ecology or nature conservation science, caused by smartphones. People use these devices to take pictures in the field, and then post them on social media. If the number of such images is high, others can use them to carry out a meta-analysis and come to some interesting, valuable for science conclusions.

"You can even wonder whether future flights to Mars are important from the perspective of natural changes in Central Europe - said the scientist from Poznań. - In the near future, probably to a small extent. If the changes would concern energy, for nature it would mean a fundamental change, for example associated with construction of high-voltage lines or destruction of ecological corridors".

"The working method, which consists in identifying these links and finding their consequences is interesting due to the fact that it particularly encourages people to think and search for arguments" - emphasised Prof. Tryjanowski.

The meeting was funded under the project "Academic and Scientific Poznań".

PAP - Science and Scholarship in Poland

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