What is CASCADE about?
One of the most challenging themes in ecology over the last decades is the quest for the understanding of discontinuous changes in ecosystems. Discontinuous shifts have already been observed and analyzed for a wide variety of ecological systems, including lakes, drylands, peatlands, rangelands, marine systems, and musselbeds.
Some of these discontinuous shifts in ecosystems imply undesired and irreversible changes. For example, shallow lakes can suddenly change into eutrophic systems with a large loss in biological diversity.
CASCADE will investigate and analyze a range of dryland ecosystems in southern Europe to obtain a better understanding of sudden shifts in drylands that may lead to major losses in biodiversity and concomitant ecosystem services.
Based on these analyses, CASCADE will develop ways to predict the proximity of the CASCADE’s dryland ecosystems to thresholds in such a way that these predictions can be used by policymakers and land users for more sustainable management of drylands worldwide.
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CASCADE flyer - scientists version
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- Published on Monday, 06 May 2013 09:57
- Written by Erik van den Elsen
A flyer with all ins-and-outs of the project has been produced and is available for download. Scientists from within the CASCADE project have been working on writing down all scientific aspects of the project in an easy to read flyer. The flyer has been edited by Nichola Geeson. The flyer gives a broad overview of the project and goes into some scientific details. A more general public -oriented flyer is in preparation as well, and will be published on this website soon. The flyer can be downloaded from HERE, or from the download section of this website.
CASCADE informational videos in preparation
- Details
- Published on Tuesday, 23 April 2013 13:16
- Written by Erik van den Elsen
At this moment, a series of informational video's is being produced, that will help the general public in understanding what the CASCADE project is all about. The five short videos, that have been recorded in the field during the last plenary project meeting in Spain, will answer the following questions regarding the CASCADE project;
- Why are drylands important?,
- What are sudden ecosystem shifts?,
- What processes happen in an ecosystem during a sudden shift? and
- How can we manage vulnerable dryland ecosystems better?
Also, a 'general' video is in preparation that explains all ins-and-outs of the project in short. The length of the video's is between 3 and 5 minutes are being presented by CASCADE researchers, and will be published on the CASCADE information channel website, CASCADiS, soon.
For more information contact: Erik van den Elsen or Jane Brandt