Introducing AlienScenarios: a project to develop scenarios and models of biological invasions for the 21 st century

Abstract

AlienScenarios, a three-year project starting in March 2019, will evaluate for the first time the range of plausible futures of biological invasions for the 21st century. AlienScenarios consists of seven project partners and seven integrated complementary subprojects. We will develop the qualitative narratives for plausible futures of global alien species richness and impacts in the 21st century – the Alien Species Narratives (ASNs). The ASNs further serve as overarching concept to parameterize quantitative models of global, continental and regional futures of biological invasions. We will also establish the first global mechanistic invasion model considering major processes of biological invasions such as source pools, driver dynamics and establishment rates. Further, we will assess the impacts of invasive alien species (IAS) in terms of economic costs according to the different ASNs. In addition, we will assess the consequences of different levels of implementation of the European Union Regulation on IAS. Providing some more detailed regional information, we will analyse changes of the functional composition of communities in mountain regions under different scenario storylines and will extend the analyses to the Global South using Panama as a country-level case study. Finally, the results of the other WPs will be synthesized, and the approach and results of AlienScenarios will be discussed with and communicated to stakeholders and the wider community. AlienScenarios will provide crucially needed insights for pro-active alien species management and policy. It will thus make an important contribution to global assessments and projections of biodiversity and ecosystem services, as well as regional policies (e.g. EU regulation on IAS).

Drivers of future alien species impacts: An expert‐based assessment

“…An interdisciplinary group of 25 scholars consisting of experts of invasion science, land‐use change, global change, environmental scenario construction, elicitation processes and environmental politics convened in a workshop on invasion scenarios in Vienna, Austria, in October 2016. This workshop and subsequent work focused on laying the ground for developing invasion scenarios, that is, plausible scenarios representing how biological invasions might develop under contrasting socio‐economic and societal conditions until the mid‐21st century (Essl et al., 2019; Lenzner et al., 2019; Roura‐Pascual et al, in prep. ).…”

Scientists' warning on invasive alien species

“…Despite intensive research directed at modelling potential changes in the distribution of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine species owing to climate and land‐use change, there is still much uncertainty in predictions of which species will colonize new regions and habitats and what their impacts will be (Elith, 2017; Capinha et al ., 2018; Rocchini et al ., 2019). Models of how levels of invasions (and associated impacts) will change in the next decades under different scenarios of socio‐economic development and societal responses are still scarce (Chytrý et al ., 2012) or are under development (Essl et al ., 2019 b ). Growing human populations and a greatly expanded global network of commerce, combined with environmental changes and their uncertainties, result in often surprising appearances and subsequent establishment of species all around the world.…”

“…Among the most pressing challenges for invasion science are the need to identify aspects of invasion dynamics that can realistically be extrapolated into the future and to deal with associated uncertainty levels (e.g. Latombe et al ., 2019; Essl et al ., 2019 b ). Importantly, many potential future invaders have already been introduced (e.g.…”

What Will the Future Bring for Biological Invasions on Islands? An Expert-Based Assessment

“…For the selection procedure, each workshop participant identified three most important drivers for future invasions and the highest ranked drivers were selected. This set of drivers underlies complementary assessments of biological invasion scenarios that are currently under development (Essl et al, 2019b(Essl et al, , 2020Roura-Pascual et al, under review). We adopted this updated list of 15 drivers and classified them into three thematic groups: (i) environmental change drivers (climate change; ocean acidification; eutrophication and pollution; biodiversity loss and degradation), (ii) socio-economic activity drivers (trade and transport; land use/cover change; socio-economic change; demography and migration) and (iii) society and technology (awareness, values and lifestyle; recreation and tourism; communication and outreach; technology and innovation; cooperation, legislation and agreements; IAS science; IAS management).…”