About Workshop

This Knowledge Exchange event will last four days, starting on Monday 20 October at 11.00 BST and finishing on Thursday 23 October by 12.30 BST.

Achieving sustainable human-wildlife coexistence in well-functioning ecosystems is a vitally important and major challenge under global change. In this context, Rewilding, an emerging paradigm in ecosystem restoration, is viewed by a growing number of scientists as central to the restoration agenda. Rewilding differs from more established conservation approaches as it de-emphasizes efforts towards preserving or bringing back certain focal species or habitats, in favour of prioritising the connectivity and health of the ecosystem as a whole. More precisely, the emphasis is on restoration of ecosystem services (such as pollination, water purification, carbon storage,  etc) and their underpinning ecosystem functions. Other defining features of rewilding are the requirement of minimal ongoing management and viewing ecosystems as social-ecological systems. The latter point provides space for different scales of rewilding, from the most purist at one end of the spectrum, to small-scale urban rewilding at the other. While mathematics has played a key role in ecology for well over a century, its use in rewilding remains limited. This is in part due to the fact that the rewilding approach is still in the early phases of developing a rigorous scientific foundation.

The purpose of this KE event is to bring together academic and non-academic scientists in mathematics and ecology, in order to tackle some of the practical problems related to rewilding. The ICMS has previously funded a term long programme, Rewilding mathematics. The perspectives paper Mathematical Perspectives on Rewilding is the outcome of that programme and the theoretical premise of this KE event.

Format: The KE event will take place over four days. The first two days will be introductory, with the schedule including talks and time for impromptu discussions (and talks). The last two days will be group-work based. Ideally, at the end of day two the participants will have split in three or four groups; by the end of day four they will have three well phrased problems and a strategy to tackle them, so that after the event they can continue working on these problems with tangible outputs, e.g. in the form of papers/code or other formats.

Topics: While some topics of discussion will be pre-agreed with the speakers, we are very open to the audience suggesting pressing problems in rewilding that could benefit from the use of mathematics. You can suggest these in the registration form or during the event. Very broadly, any problems under the headings “modelling complex ecosystems”, “rewilding as a social-ecological system”, “quantifying and monitoring success in a rewilding project” or anything else broadly rewilding-related will do.

Participation information:

Applications to attend this workshop are now closed. We are unable to accept late submissions.

All applicants have been contacted by ICMS. Please check your junk/spam inbox before getting in touch.

Speakers:

Dr Kevin Watts, Forest Research: Kevin is an applied landscape ecologist, interested in landscape modelling and in modelling  ecological complexity.

Dr Sally Marsh, Co-director of High Weald National Landscape: Sally is interested in rural ecology and rural policy.

Dr Tom Jameson, Forest Research: Tom’s current research focuses on developing field experiments to study landscape restoration processes, informing best practice and quantify outcomes.

Prof. Christina Cobbold, Glasgow University: Christina is a mathematical biologists, with a focus on spatial and evolutionary ecology. She is particularly interested in assessing the effect of habitat fragmentation on species survival and the effect of environmental variation on the evolution and adaptation of life-history traits.

Prof. Rebecca Killick, Lancaster University: Rebecca is a statistician, developing statistical models and methods for nonstationary time-series, changepoints and multiscale methods.

Emily Shipp, Edinburgh Futures Institute: Emily has been working on cutting edge approached for opinion and behaviour modification