Centre for Landscape and Climate Research

The aim of the Centre for Landscape and Climate Research is to understand interactions of the water cycle with ecosystems across multiple spatial and temporal scales.

It will undertake fundamental research that helps solve the problems of global biodiversity loss, water scarcity and flooding, and threats to food security, which are arising from complex interactions between anthropogenic climate change and land use change. The centre will aim to advance our understanding of a range of ecosystem services, a concept adopted by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

Newly available satellite data from the European GMES programme and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) will be used to quantify and economically value critical ecosystem services.

The main goals and objectives of the Centre are:

• To understand interactions of the water cycle with ecosystems across multiple spatial and temporal scales.
• To carry out fundamental research on pressures from climate change and land use change on ecosystem services, such as biodiversity, water resources, carbon cycle and food security.
• To analyse the effects of spatial patterns and processes upon biological populations in evolving, three-dimensional landscapes.

The Centre for Landscape and Climate Research was launched in January 2012.

The Director of the Centre is Professor Heiko Balzter.