Overview of Ecocycles

The aim of Ecocycles is to investigate how changes in land use and climate influence ecosystem processes and explore how ecological research findings can be used to improve conservation management and inform environmental policies.

Ecocycles is a collaborative research project which is funded through BiodivERsA, an ERA-net project within the European Union’s 6th framework programme for research.
In recent years, evidence has emerged that dramatic changes in ecosystem processes and functioning are taking place across Europe, under the joint impact of climate change and human-induced shifts in land use. One of the most spectacular changes concerns populations of keystone herbivores including voles and lemmings. Such species play an extremely important role across a wide range of ecosystems where they have large effects on ecosystem structure through herbivory and form the prey base for a diverse guild of predators from Arctic fox to numerous raptor species; many of which are of international conservation concern.
This project encompasses ecosystems as diverse as Lapland tundra, Fennoscandian taiga forest, UK upland grasslands and forestry plantations, agricultural plains of France and agro-steppe in Spain.

In Northern areas of Europe, voles and lemmings have historically shown regular cycles with predictable phases of increase and decline. Interestingly these cycles have been disappearing in many areas. In contrast, areas of Southern Europe have recently experienced outbreaks of voles where populations have been historically stable.
The large-scale nature of the project allows us to answer questions about how geographically extensive changes in land use and climate alter important phenomena across different habitats. Scientific models of the species interactions that we have developed can be used to predict potential ecosystem changes that will occur in the future for many different ecosystems.

Such changes are likely to lead to wide scale changes in ecosystem structure and function by influencing predator populations and plant communities. An essential part of the project is ensuring that our research findings can be used to improve management strategies for key species and ecosystems. There is much uncertainty as to how scientific research is used by managers and policy makers. Within Ecocycles one of our priorities is setting up a National Consultative Forum in each partner county to foster a constructive engagement between researchers, stakeholders and policy makers to disseminate our results widely, to enable the exchange of information between these sectors, and improve robustness and efficiency of existing policies. Alongside this we aim to address the question of what barriers exist to the uptake of recommendations from research projects such as Ecocycles by land managers and policy makers.