Gabriel’s doctoral work focused on how species interaction networks can serve as operational tools for biodiversity monitoring and conservation, including how spatial network predictions that quantify uncertainty can help optimise sampling of species interactions and yield indicators of network-level change. Two papers from this work were featured here previously:

• Overcoming the disconnect between species interaction networks and biodiversity conservation (2025)
• Spatially explicit predictions of food web structure from regional-level data (2024)

I am honored to have co-supervised Gabriel and having been part of his PhD adventure!

Well done, Dr Dansereau — I look forward to collaborating further in the future!

This was a fantastic collaborative effort between members of the RDN to scope how researchers/experts in the field of response diversity (RD) understand and apply the concept, but also an attempt to tease out some of the reasons why RD may be a challenging concept to understand and apply.

Owen Petchey provides a great summary of the paper in the RDN website.

Find out more about this network, go to https://responsediversitynetwork.github.io/ and if you work in the field of response diversity, join us!

In this paper we discuss the persistent gap between the study of species interaction networks and their practical use in biodiversity conservation and management. Despite the wealth of theory on network structure, robustness and stability, this knowledge is rarely translated into indicators or tools that conservation practitioners can actually use. We review this disconnect and propose ways forward for embedding network-level information into biodiversity monitoring and decision-making, with a practical example using network robustness as an intretable and readily usable metric for large assessments of network stability to environmental change.

Read the full paper here.

The paper tackles a central challenge in ecological network research: species interaction data are sparse and unevenly sampled across space, making it hard to predict food web structure in regions that have not been directly surveyed. We show how regional-level metaweb data can be combined with spatial models to generate spatially explicit predictions of food web structure, while also accounting for ecological uniqueness across ecoregions.

This work contributes to a growing effort to make species interaction networks more useful as monitoring and conservation tools, extending predictions beyond the specific sites where interactions have been observed.

Read the full paper here.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to participate in meaningful and transparent ecological model development! https://for-cast.ca/jobs/postings/2022-06-08_programmer-r-geospatial/

I was truly honoured to be part of this project, during which I learned so much about the natural fire regimes in the Foothills of Alberta, about modelling and even a little about the role of Indigenous Peoples as managers of these beautiful landscapes. Our publications will be coming out soon, so stay tuned!

This piece was originally published on the Landscapes in Motion blog. Landscapes in Motion is a large-scale, multidisciplinary project examining historical wildfire patterns and landscape change in the southern Rockies of Alberta, Canada. You can learn more about the project at Landscapes In Motion.

An important part of a researcher’s job is to learn more about what other scientists are doing in different institutions, fields, and ecosystems, and stay up-to-date on what they’re discovering. This year, Dr. Ceres Barros with the Landscapes in Motion modelling team identified a great opportunity to present her preliminary findings at a significant scientific conference in New Orleans. Once there, she had the chance to soak up new knowledge from fire ecologists from around North America. Dr. Barros gained some important new perspectives on her work with Landscapes in Motion and made some connections with fire ecologists from far beyond her home base at the University of British Columbia.

It was a meeting of ecologists like any other. Most of us were still wearing our field gear—ecologists are always ready for the field, and rarely ready for any formal event!—but the enthusiasm of meeting with colleagues and friends we haven’t seen for years was evident in many faces on the first day of the conference. We hugged, we talked about our current work, and got lost amidst the endless list of talks, workshops, and posters to choose from.

To top it all off, we got to experience it all in New Orleans, this year’s host city for the Ecological Society of America’s annual meeting! The city’s hot, humid air and ever-present jazz music were the perfect backdrop for our conversations. I was in for an exciting week and I couldn’t have been happier, regretting only that it never occurred to me to pack something warm enough for the air-conditioned conference hall!

{alt=” A jazz band at the historical Spotted Cat Music Club in Frenchmen Street. Photo by C. Barros. “}

One of the reasons why I chose to participate in this year’s meeting was the central theme: “Extreme events, ecosystem resilience and human well-being”. I knew I would be able to listen to many interesting talks on fire ecology that would give me a good overview of the ‘state of the art’ of the field, particularly in North America. I also hoped that many of these talks would touch on concepts of ecological resilience and stability, which describe how an ecosystem recovers after a disturbance and whether it experiences drastic changes, and which are among the primary drivers of my work.

I was not disappointed. I did attend several sessions focused on ecological stability and resilience, and I learned quite a bit about current research in fire ecology in North America. For instance, I learned that our fellow colleagues south of the border are increasingly concerned about how understory plant communities may affect diversity and/or tree growth after a fire. At the same time, many recognize the importance of fire for promoting ecosystem resilience and researchers are exploring the conditions under which fire can be used to maintain desirable ecosystem conditions.

What’s trending in fire ecology: role of the understory vegetation

There were two particularly interesting talks on the interplay between fire and understory communities that drew my attention.

The first was by PhD candidate Clark Richter, who shared the results from his research on post-fire regeneration in Sierra Nevada following the Power Fire in 2004. His work revealed that shrub cover is higher in patches that burned at higher severity (when tree mortality was close to 100%), but that there are fewer species of shrubs and trees that colonize these patches. This is partly because these patches have harsher conditions—soils become drier and more nutrient-poor following the loss of plant cover, and only the most hardy species can grow. In addition, many tree seedlings need light to germinate and grow, and they are unable to do so under the dense shrubs that regenerate faster in severely burned patches.

The second talk that stuck with me was by Dr. Jesse Miller. He pointed to similar results across several fires in California, but he further showed that variable-severity fires promoted higher levels of species diversity across the landscape than fires that burned mostly at high severity. He described these variable-severity fires—i.e., fires that killed less vegetation in some locations than in others— as having high ‘pyrodiversity’.

Although unsurprising, the results from these two talks confirmed my expectations that shrubs might outcompete trees in places where both trees and shrubs can colonize severely burned patches. They also confirmed for me the importance of mixed-severity fire regimes for maintaining landscape-wide plant diversity. Finally, they show that further increases in fire size and severity will compromise forest regeneration in many parts of the U.S. and quite likely Canada too.

For these and other reasons, fire ecologists are advocating more and more for the use of fire to promote ecosystem resilience. The talks by Emma Williams and Dr. Sharon Hermann presented the results of important field experiments that simulated different fire regimes using prescribed burning, then evaluated forest regeneration under these treatments. On the one hand, prescribed burning generally helped trees cope with drier conditions that typically follow fire, unless they had been exposed to drought before the fires. On the other hand, prescribed burning had no effect on the growth of longleaf pine (Pinus palustris), an important species for the logging industry in the American state of Georgia. Finally, I was impressed to learn that researchers are testing the use of fire to control invasive species and/or less desired species.

Fresh eyes on my work

The other reason why I attended the ESA this year was to hear feedback on my own work. With my work fitting so well with the conference theme, I was eager to discuss it with other researchers and hear their thoughts and suggestions about the models I am developing.

I was extremely happy when other researchers in my field came around to have a look at my poster and discuss it with me. By then I already had a good idea of the direction fire research is taking in the U.S., so I was not surprised to hear some of them noting that my models may be biased if we don’t consider understory plant (e.g., shrub) recovery after a fire and how it influences tree regeneration.

At this point it is hard to foresee whether we’ll be able to take these aspects into account in our models, but we must not forget that they probably are important for ecosystem dynamics even in Canada. Either way, Landscapes in Motion is paving the way for more complex models of fire dynamics so that future researchers will be able to account for other forest components including not only understory species, but also pest and disease dynamics.

{alt=” A peek at the ESA poster session. Besides the science, I particularly enjoyed that some stands gave out chocolate! Photo by C. Barros. “}

{alt=” Our poster entitled "Including fire-vegetation feedbacks for modelling mixed-severity fire regimes at large spatial scales". Despite being situated away from the main flow of people, many researchers in fire ecology and beyond came to see it and discuss with me. Photo by C. Barros. “}

{alt=” Our poster, now in a readable format! Note that all results are preliminary, but the key message is that when we include not only the effects of fire on vegetation, but also the effects of vegetation on fire, it can change the expected fire properties like size and severity. Note the “TO-DO” list—I think I’ll be very busy in the coming months! “}

I can’t say that the ESA meeting has significantly changed the plans I had for my work, but it surely consolidated my ideas. For one, I will keep in mind that my models may have some bias towards favouring tree regeneration because they do not account for shrub growth. Also, it will be interesting to assess landscape-wide diversity under different levels of fire severity and relate that to forest resilience to changing fire regimes. Finally, it was gratifying to hear my colleagues say that the work we are developing under Landscapes in Motion is very timely and everyone was looking forward to seeing more of the model!

All in all, it was a productive meeting in a vibrant and diverse city, and I came back to Victoria motivated and filled with eagerness to continue the development of our model!

So, on the last week of June I joined Dr Cameron Naficy and his field crew in the southwestern Alberta Foothills to help them collect fire scars and tree-core samples as part of the Landscapes in Motion project (LIM). As the ecological modeller in the LIM team I don’t need (as in, my work doesn’t require me to) to carry out field work - I sort of parasitize my colleagues for their data. However, I think most will agree that going to the field at least once can be extremely helpful for a number of reasons.

The two workshop sessions are part of the 12th Annual Conference of the Centre for Forest Research (Centre d’Etude de la Foret), and we were very happy to discover that we have a full house for both!

The session will be an introduction to SpaDES. We’ll discuss it’s potential and how it can be used at a higher level (that is, without having to dig in the code so much). The second session is targeted to those who wish to learn how they can develop their own simulation models in SpaDES. It’ll be more technical, of course, but still fun if you’re half as geeky as I am (and I’m not that geeky, mind you!).

I’m super excited for this and really looking forward to be teaching SpaDES to new faces!

You can find out more about SpaDES here, and check out the previous workshop material!

This piece was originally published on the Landscapes in Motion blog. Landscapes in Motion is a large-scale, multidisciplinary project examining historical wildfire patterns and landscape change in the southern Rockies of Alberta, Canada. You can learn more about the project at Landscapes In Motion.

A “model” is just a representation of reality. Models are nearly everywhere and come in all shapes and sizes. They are an important part of weather forecasts, stock market predictions, medication dosage estimates, and much more.

We use and need models because reality is often too complex, costly, or slow for our purposes. Models not only represent reality, but theysimplify it. In other words, they all take shortcuts… which means that at some level and at some point all models are wrong!¹ So, when designing a model we need to be clear aboutwhatwe want to model and themodel purpose.

But whatare models?

We can think of models as theater plays. The plot or story is the system that they try to represent (for example, the weather) and the characters are the model components that interact with each other (for example, temperature and wind). These model components are called “variables”.

In a play, some characters have leading roles and others have supporting roles. Likewise, some variables are more important than others in determining how the represented system functions. Theoretically, we could have an unlimited number of variables in a model. But just like having too many characters in a play makes it hard to follow, too many variables make a model hard to grasp and not necessarily more accurate than a simpler model. So a large part of a modeller’s job is to figure out which variables to use, and how many.

Why do we need models?

Can you imagine a world where your doctor says, “Well, we don’t really know when you should take this medicine, so… just try it at random times of the day and see when it feels more effective”. Or you are buckling up in the airplane and the captain says, “We have no idea what the wind speed and direction will be when we land, so we’ll just have to wing it,literally!”.

Got the idea?

Models help us understand the world around us. Most of us are “modelling” every day without realising it. For instance, before crossing the road you look both ways and your brain assesses the speed of coming cars, their distance, and anything else that might influence your safety, like a bend in the road that limits visibility. Your brain then tries topredict whether you’ll be hit by a vehicle if you cross the road, and you make the decision of waiting or going for it. Of course, this is not a formal model, but the idea is that our actions often require some sense of “what will happen if…?”. Models help us to both gain that knowledge and to answer that question, allowing us to make better social, political, ecological, or economic choices.

The most helpful models are those that have less probability of being wrong - we call this probabilitymodel uncertainty. But how much we allow a model to be wrong depends on our goal. While we are okay with our weather app telling us there is 70% chance of rain, we will not accept a 70% chance that a skyscraper will not fall after a small earthquake. Reducing model uncertainty is all about having the right variables and sufficient information.

Models in ecology

Ecologists use a variety of modelling techniques depending on the question they are trying to answer, and the amount and type of information available. Field ecologists most often want to understand the relationships between variables they have measured in the field. For instance, to understand whether trees grow taller in wetter or drier soils, they would measure tree height over a range of soil moisture conditions and use statistical models to relate tree height with soil water content.

Theoretical ecologists, on the other hand often rely on purely mathematical concepts to formulate their models. Instead of going to the field and measuring tree height and soil water content, theoretical ecologists would use mathematical equations that reflect their knowledge about how trees grow taller in wetter areas. They might then compare their model’s predictions against measurements of actual trees, but many theoretical models are never actually confronted with “reality.”

Then there are ecological modellers, like us in theLandscapes in Motion modelling team, who are somewhere in between. In complex projects such as ours we need a bit of everything. For example, to model the growth of an individual Douglas-fir tree, we can use a mathematical model relating tree size and tree age. But to modelwhereDouglas-fir trees can grow, we would use statistical models relating climate conditions with the tree’s real-life range. As you can see from Figure 2, Douglas-fir is unlikely to germinate in tropical or arctic climates!

We are neither relying solely on data, nor using theoretical models alone. We combine both (which is why we’re awesome!).

Modelling as part ofLandscapes in Motion

Our work is still in its early phases, but in general our objective is to understand how fire, vegetation, climate and topography interact to produce fires of different sizes, frequencies, and severities in the Foothills of Southern Alberta. Our model will need to reproduce the processes governing forest growth and fire spread, which will affect each other, and in turn how these are affected by climate and topography. We also want our model to be reproducible, easily updatable and transparent, which is why we are developing it usingSpaDESa modelling framework that makes all of these easily achievable.

How these processes may be simulated inSpaDESdeserves in itself a whole new blog post! So stay tuned if you want to accompany us in our modelling adventure!

If you want to find out more aboutSpaDES check these out:

SpaDES page:http://spades.predictiveecology.org/

SpaDES workshops:http://spades-workshops.predictiveecology.org/articles/index.html

I now have to adapt my way of thinking and working to a reality that is “producing directly usable science”. This is neither better or worse than what I’ve done so far, which concerned a much more theoretically-grounded investigation of how ecosystems might change with climate forcing and land-use change. But it certainly requires that my objectives and methods become more driven by their influence on management, rather than my scientific curiosity! - although so far I feel that the two go hand-in-hand… lucky me! - I know that some researchers might find applied sciences less appealing. I find having management-driven expectations to be an added challenge that makes it all even more motivating. I’ve never considered myself a person whose research seeks to understand the unknown for the sake of increasing my knowledge, and the scientific community’s, about something. I’m usually drawn to problems that affect the “here and now” and that help us understand how our actions as humans can be beneficial, or detrimental, to ecosystems. So, naturally, working in an applied context is very attractive to me.

This is why I was happy to embrace the opportunity to become part of the Landscapes In Motion project. This project aims at understanding the dynamics of forest ecosystems in the southern Rockies of Alberta (note to Americans reading this: you’re likely to call these the Northern Rockies ;) ), by taking into account the interactions between fire, vegetation and climate. Ultimately, we will strive to understand both past and present dynamics to be able to predict how these might change in the future, under scenarios of climate warming and alternative land management practices.

Since my arrival to Victoria, BC, almost 4 weeks ago, I’ve plunged into the literature of modelling fire-dynamics forest ecosystems and found that (probably like in any other ecosystem) there is a multitude of drivers, biotic and abiotic that make studying these dynamics a complex, yet very interesting task. But I was already used to this reality. What is really new to me is that this time it’ll be impossible not to consider the economic and cultural aspects of these ecosystems - or should I say socio-ecosystems…?

Forests in the foothills of Alberta are a scene where climatic, ecological, economic, social and political actors all have leading roles. The spatio-temporal dynamics of fire are affected by ecosystem structure and composition, but also directly by climate conditions. In turn, ecosystem structure and composition will also change if both fire regimes and climate conditions are altered. Then, there’s the “human side” of things. Forests have high economic value, both in terms of exploitation and in terms of their intrinsic value (think about how a nice forest view can increase the value of real estate). They also have high social, cultural and conservation values, by providing a space for various recreational activities and habitat for numerous species of animals, plants, fungi, etc.

Finally, there are the political aspects that encompass all of the above. A particularly interesting one for me is the cultural and political interests linked to the indigenous peoples of Canada - First Nations. First Nations peoples are slowly regaining recognition and political power, and consequently reclaiming the rights to what were originally their lands. Being European, this brings me a whole new set of things to consider. Not only are the interests of these people often different from those of other stakeholders, but their knowledge of the land and its fire regimes has often been ignored, by scientists and by land managers, despite its enormous value. Indigenous communities are known to have used fire in the past for managing the landscape. With the arrival of the mid 20th century, forest management strove to suppress fire, and the “natural” fire regimes (AKA pre-industrial - that’s pre-1950s in this case) that had shaped forest dynamics thus far were also suppressed. As a consequence, forest structure and composition, and their dynamics are likely to have changed, and fuel accumulation increased. We now believe this may be one of the reasons why fires might be more severe lately - but do see this nice article for other reasons related with climate change.

Another interesting socio-ecological aspect is related to caribou conservation. Caribou populations in Canada have suffered major declines in the last few decades. Although many factors continue to contribute to this, habitat loss from forest fires is certainly one that might cause further decline in caribou numbers. Seeing that the Government of Canada is currently investing on the study and protection of this species (see for instance here and here), understanding fire dynamics and their consequences is of even greater immediate interest.

I’m sure that like me, you have already realized the dimensions and complexity of fire dynamics, and their consequences for Canadian forests. You probably also understand what is making me enthusiastic about this new project, but if not I’ll say it out loud. I feel that my research will not only quench my thirst for knowledge, but will also actively contribute to a sustainable management of these ecosystems - something that I’ve been wanting to do since I decided I wanted to be an ecologist, and I was probably 10 back then!

This piece was originally published on the Landscapes in Motion blog. Landscapes in Motion is a large-scale, multidisciplinary project examining historical wildfire patterns and landscape change in the southern Rockies of Alberta, Canada. You can learn more about the project at Landscapes In Motion.

I’ve always been quite stubborn—although I prefer to consider myself as “someone who knows what they want”—and I knew from a young age that I wanted to work towards the protection of Nature. Unfortunately, I can’t say this came from growing up surrounded by impressive nature, or in a very natural setting. In fact, my childhood was mostly spent in an urban environment, close to Lisbon, Portugal. So I blame my Father for having exposed me to the National Geographic TV series and magazines as far back as I can remember, for repeating to me every day that even saving just one toilet paper leaf would help forests, for telling me water is as precious as gold. It is he who taught me to love and respect all things natural.

(I did, however, always have the sea present in my daily life, and at the age of 10 I got so angry about ocean pollution that I wrote a petition to the EU to “stop pollution and killing nature”—needless to say that getting signatures from my schoolmates didn’t really improve my popularity…!)

So choosing a degree was easy. It had to be Biology, although I ended up specialising in Terrestrial Ecology rather than “marine stuff”. Questions about my future arose after I graduated from the University of Lisbon. How did I want to help the world? Through research, consulting, or by getting involved with environmental policy? Fortunately for me, it wasn’t long before it became clear to me that my calling was research.

During my year as an MSc student at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, I fell in love with the study of ecosystem resilience and stability. It fascinated me how ecosystems can cope with changes in fire regimes, climate, and human land-use. To a certain degree, all ecosystems are able to re-organize themselves and “absorb” these and other disturbances; however, they can only be “pushed” to a certain limit, beyond which they collapse and change to another type of ecosystem. How far can we push ecosystems, which ecosystems are more fragile, which are more resilient, are certain types of disturbances worse than others? These are the sort of questions that get me excited and motivate my work.

So, I decided to embark on a PhD journey where I could pursue my curiosity. This journey took me to Grenoble, in the French Alps, where I became interested in exploring whether different types of ecosystems were more sensitive to disturbances, and if different types of disturbances had greater consequences for the stability of these ecosystems. So I went big, testing these questions at the scale of landscapes and using computer models as my guinea pigs. I studied how climate change, changes in drought regimes and changes in rural activities interact and affect the vegetation in mountain ecosystems of the French Alps – more precisely in Écrins National Park. My modelling experiments have shown that the way humans use these ecosystems can have a very strong effect on many plant communities. Yet, warmer temperatures will also drive important long-term changes in these systems, with forests climbing in elevation and alpine plants receding. The effects of drought were at shorter time scales but quite drastic when drought was very severe and frequent.

An important lesson to take from this work is that disturbances affect ecosystems at different time scales. A severe fire, for example, can cause immediate changes in a forest by killing younger trees and burning ground-level vegetation. These changes can be measured year by year as ground-level vegetation recovers, and also over decades and centuries, as the fire will have affected the age distribution of the forest’s trees. It is important that we recognise this and remember that a forest’s lifetime is much longer than a human’s. Understanding how fire regimes have shaped forests and how they might change with climate warming requires looking relatively far into the past and into the future—which is why we need models.

My passion for ecosystems, their resilience, and the lessons we can learn from them using computer models has brought me to the University of British Columbia, where I recently began a post-doctoral fellowship. As a member of the Landscapes in Motion team, I will develop models to reconstruct fire-driven dynamics in the forests of the Alberta foothills and predict how they might change in the future. Have past fires been very frequent and of low severity? Or infrequent and very severe? Or a mix of the two? What affected fire frequency and severity the most? Weather? The variety of tree species in the forest? Both? And what will happen if these change, will fires become more severe/frequent? And how will the forests change?

A lot has changed in the last year: I’m now living on a different continent, studying a different mountain ecosystem, and beginning the next stage of my career as a researcher. But some things never change—I’m still as stubborn as ever, which will serve me well as I strive to discover how ecosystems have been shaped and how they may change in the future.

When my friends and family ask me whether I feel “any different” I disappoint them with a “erm, not actually…”. I think most of us expect the same feeling that we have when we graduate from a university degree, or from High School - I did at least. But the truth is, I was being treated like a “grown-up researcher” for quite some time already, so nothing really changed. Ok, I’m lying, I get to sign my e-mails with “Dr. Ceres Barros” or “Ceres Barros, Ph.D.”… amazing…

I think I’m actually happy that things didn’t change so much for me. I don’t feel any more special because I have a Ph.D. degree and I think no one should. Yes, it’s a hell lot of work. And yes, I poured my heart into it. But also, I did it because I’m passionate about my work and because I wanted to. So, for me the degree is merely confirming to others that I can do research independently. Other than that, I don’t feel any more special than my other MSc colleagues who chose to work for environmental consultancy, for instance.

I think what really matters is what you learn from the whole experience. In my case, I think my learnings were mostly on the personal side of things. Of course I’m much more experienced in a variety of technical aspects, like coding, statistical analyses and scientific writing. But what I felt was the greatest leap was “how to deal with others in academia” - and I know that I still have much to learn!

Coming from a pretty conventional Portuguese academic world and having experienced the British academic environment, France was pretty daunting. Not because it was France, per se, but because I was treated like a researcher, rather than a student, for the first time. I was expected to call for meetings and discuss with others when I needed, and not to wait for others to come to me and ask how my work was advancing. I was also expected to ask for help (and realise that I needed it beforehand) from other researchers other than my advisor(s). This. Was. Hard. It might sound stupid and obvious, but it really was hard for me. And I think that I’m not the only one out there. Shy students typically avoid asking for help and may not even realise they need help. I’m not very shy, but I thought that if I asked for help, others would think I was stupid or ignorant. So, I sometimes spent hours trying to figure out some silly R error, that my next-desk-neighbour could solve in a minute. I’m not saying it isn’t good to be independent and try to solve our own problems before asking for help, but many advisors forget to leave their students at-ease with their questions and doubts, which can lead to isolation and the loss of precious PhD time.

Apart from learning that asking for help is fine, I also learnt that (senior) researchers are not Gods. This was both funny and relieving. It was funny because it reminded me of the feeling that I had when I became older and realised that my Mom and Dad didn’t have the answer for everything (which I know now to be “42”). It was relieving because, if they are not Gods, then I don’t need to be one either. We all make mistakes, we all have different weaknesses and strengths, we are all human. That felt good… :)

I hope my short overview of my experience isn’t disappointing to current Ph.D. students that might read this, and in a way I hope it helps many of them get through some of the emotional challenges a Ph.D. can offer. Many recruiting labs/advisors forget to mention how a Ph.D. will challenge a student personally (or maybe they just don’t care about it) and that the emotional difficulties are part of the growing process. I know that hearing this from my senior colleagues would have helped me through the bad times…

Anyhow, I was very lucky to obtain a position in Victoria, Canada and will be soon moving there to start post-doc in Dr Eliot McIntire’s group. We’ll be working together on dynamical models of mixed-severity fire regimes in forest landscapes where many stakeholders have contrasting views on how the forests should be managed. So these are exciting times to me!

Unable to find the answers to these questions and a methodological framework that allowed me to describe ecosystem states by taking into account the contribution of multiple ecosystem components, I and my co-authors have developed a way forward in this direction. We have made use of the R package “hypervolume” and used it as a tool to describe ecosystem states from a multidimensional perspective. The framework we propose can be adapted to many different kinds of data, such as species abundances their functional trait values, landscape composition, metabarcoding data, … We have tested the framework using simulated data sets, but it would be wonderful to see it applied in real cases…!

So, I invite you to have a look at our paper and share your ideas and thoughts!