Introductory seminar: "Advancing biodiversity monitoring for tropical forest restoration"

Hubert's focus is optimizing biodiversity monitoring methodology for validating the success of tropical forest restoration projects, see more below. His main supervisor is Alex Antonelli (BioEnv/Kew), with Daniel Zuleta (BioEnv) and Daisy Dent (ETH Zurich) as co-supervisors. Examiner is Angela Wulff.

Abstract

International commitments and private investment are beginning to drive landscape-scale change in the tropics in the name of restoring biodiversity. Yet, methods to validate whether these efforts are successful are lacking: current scientific guidelines for monitoring tropical biodiversity cannot be readily implemented at scale, while industrial standards lack granularity for accurately assessing impacts. Large amounts of money will funnel into tropical restoration projects, whether or not scientific guidance catches up. If it doesn’t, there is a risk that much of this money will be wasted on ineffective projects. To address this knowledge gap, I will test a combination of traditional monitoring methodologies, recent high-tech approaches, and new innovations to establish the cost-effectiveness of different biodiversity indicators. Along the way I will assess the sensitivity of different biodiversity indicators to land use change, identify indicators that explain the most variability amongst all the data I’ve collected, model the cost-effectiveness of monitoring different combinations of indicators, and demonstrate new technology that can push the bounds of what is possible with landscape-scale biodiversity monitoring. Insights from my research will provide restoration project developers with guidance for monitoring the biodiversity on their projects, as well as insights on project quality for investors and standards developers.