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Biodiversity & Ecosystem Service Sustainability (BESS)

Programme background

Landscapes in the UK are being increasingly viewed as multi-functional ecosystems, which are required to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services to people including food, clean air and water, health and recreation.

The multi-functional view of UK landscapes is firmly on the policy agenda, as evidenced by policy-led activities such as the National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA), the UK's first analysis of the environment delivering long-term benefits to people through the provision of ecosystem goods and services.

We know that there has been significant biodiversity loss in the UK, but we have a very limited understanding of its functional consequences in terms of levels of biodiversity we must have in order to provide the ecosystem services we need and how to manage land and resource use to support important biodiversity-ecosystem function relationships in an integrated way.

Consequently, we lack tools to guide land and resource use decisions for multiple ecosystem services, and help us adapt to future environmental change.

In order to address these research challenges, the BESS programme will endeavour to address the following scientific goals by undertaking replicated research across a small number of UK landscape study areas:

• to understand the functional role of biodiversity in UK ecosystems across a range of ecosystem goods and services, environmental gradients and scales typical of real landscapes;
• to identify critical levels of biodiversity required to deliver a range of ecosystem services that meet societal needs, and the land and resource use associated with these biodiversity levels; and
• to develop impact assessment tools to explore the implications of land and resource use change on biodiversity and a range of ecosystem services in a changing environment.

In order to increase our understanding of the consequences of biodiversity loss, the BESS programme will undertake research and activities in an integrated way and take a holistic approach to exploring the functional role of biodiversity in UK ecosystems across a range of environmental gradients and scales.