The BEC Group develops and applies state-of-the art ecological knowledge, methods, and tools to understand ecosystem functioning, biodiversity change, and feedbacks in coupled social-economic-ecological systems. We use this knowledge to develop management options to achieve biodiversity and sustainability goals
The BEC group is the institute’s hub of applied ecology and conservation research. The group provides the needed ecological and conservation insights to help IIASA promote institutional, demographic, behavioral, technological, social, and economic changes that achieve development goals sustainably.
The group’s key research areas include:
- Ecological responses to natural and anthropogenic drivers of change, for example, land and water management and climate change.
- How to prioritize conservation efforts to maximize positive impacts at scales from local to global (e.g., habitat restoration and conservation, and species management plans).
- How species and ecosystems contribute to selected ecosystem services and human wellbeing.
Models, tools, datasets
Projects
Staff
News

17 November 2023
Prioritizing land to avoid species extinction
02 November 2023
Rubber trees and deforestation: quantifying the impact of rubber production on tropical forests and biodiversity

28 June 2023
Martin Jung receives 2023 European Early Career Conservation Award
Events
04 July 2023 Virtual Event
Exploring Nature Future Scenarios for a resilient Trans-European Nature Network (TEN-N)
Focus
11 November 2023
IIASA trailblazers: Celebrating excellence in 2023


14 July 2023
Ambitious ecological restoration and deforestation control strategies could support Colombia’s climate and biodiversity targets
IIASA researchers Juliana Arbelaez-Gaviria and Eleanor Warren-Thomas have coauthored a new policy brief published with the Colombia team of the Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land, and Energy (FABLE) Consortium, an initiative under the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU) and part of the UN Sustainable Development and Solutions Network (UNSDSN). The brief outlines how deforestation and ecological restoration in Colombia may impact carbon, biodiversity, and agricultural production by 2030.
Publications
Dou, Y., Zagaria, C., O'Connor, L., Thuiller, W., & Verburg, P.H. (2023). Using the Nature Futures Framework as a lens for developing plural land use scenarios for Europe for 2050. Global Environmental Change 83 e102766. 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2023.102766. Gaüzère, Pierre, Botella, Christophe, Poggiato, Giovanni, O’Connor, Louise, Di Marco, Moreno, Dragonetti, Chiara, Maiorano, Luigi, Renaud, Julien, & Thuiller, Wilfried (2023). Dissimilarity of vertebrate trophic interactions reveals spatial uniqueness but functional redundancy across Europe. Current Biology 10.1016/j.cub.2023.10.069. (In Press) Maxwell, T., Rovai, A., Adame, M., Adams, J., Álvarez-Rogel, J., Austin, W., Beasy, K., Boscutti, F., Böttcher, M., Bouma, T., Bulmer, R., Burden, A., Burke, S., Camacho, S., Chaudhary, D., Chmura, G., Copertino, M., Cott, G., Craft, C., Day, J., de los Santos, C., Denis, L., Ding, W., Ellison, J., Ewers Lewis, C., Giani, L., Gispert, M., Gontharet, S., González-Pérez, J., González-Alcaraz, M., Gorham, Co., Graversen, A., Grey, A., Guerra, R., He, Q., Holmquist, J., Jones, A., Juanes, J., Kelleher, B., Kohfeld, K., Krause-Jensen, D., Lafratta, A., Lavery, P., Laws, E., Leiva-Dueñas, C., Loh, P., Lovelock, C., Lundquist, C., Macreadie, P., Mazarrasa, I., Megonigal, J., Neto, J., Nogueira, J., Osland, M., Pagès, J., Perera, N., Pfeiffer, E.-M., Pollmann, T., Raw, J., Recio, M., Ruiz-Fernández, A., Russell, S., Rybczyk, J., Sammul, M., Sanders, C., Santos, R., Serrano, O., Siewert, M., Smeaton, C., Song, Z., Trasar-Cepeda, C., Twilley, R., Van de Broek, M., Vitti, S., Antisari, L., Voltz, B., Wails, C., Ward, R., Ward, M., Wolfe, J., Yang, R., Zubrzycki, S., Landis, E., Smart, L., Spalding, M., & Worthington, T. (2023). Global dataset of soil organic carbon in tidal marshes. Scientific Data 10 (1) 10.1038/s41597-023-02633-x. Sykes, R.E., O'Neill, H.M.K., Juffe-Bignoli, D., Metcalfe, K., Stephenson, P.J., Struebig, M.J., Visconti, P., Burgess, N.D., Kingston, N., Davies, Z.G., & Smith, R.J. (2023). Developing a framework to improve global estimates of conservation area coverage. Oryx 1-10. 10.1017/S0030605323000625. Singh, S., Verma, A., & Hofhansl, F. (2023). Topographical heterogeneity governs species distribution and regeneration potential by mediating soil attributes in Western Himalayan forests. Research Square 10.21203/rs.3.rs-3462205/v1. (Submitted) Wang, Y., Hollingsworth, P.M., Zhai, D., West, C., Green, J., Chen, H., Hurni, K., Su, Y., Warren-Thomas, E., Xu, J., & Ahrends, A. (2023). High-resolution maps show that rubber causes substantial deforestation. Nature 10.1038/s41586-023-06642-z. Thuiller, W., Calderón‐Sanou, I., Chalmandrier, L., Gaüzère, P., O'Connor, L., Ohlmann, M., Poggiato, G., & Münkemüller, T. (2023). Navigating the integration of biotic interactions in biogeography. Journal of Biogeography 10.1111/jbi.14734. (In Press) Martins, I., Schrodt, F., Blowes, S., Bates, A., Bjorkman, A., Brambilla, V., Carvajal-Quintero, J., Chow, C., Daskalova, G. , Edwards, K., Eisenhauer, N., Field, R., Fontrodona-Eslava, A., Henn, J., van Klink, R., Madin, J., Magurran, A., McWilliam, M., Moyes, F., Pugh, B., Sagouis, A., Trindade-Santos, I., McGill, B., Chase, J., & Dornelas, M. (2023). Widespread shifts in body size within populations and assemblages. Science 381 (6662) 1067-1071. 10.1126/science.adg6006. Warren-Thomas, E., Ahrends, A., Wang, Y., Wang, M., & Jones, J. (2023). Rubber's inclusion in zero‐deforestation legislation is necessary but not sufficient to reduce impacts on biodiversity. Conservation Letters e12967. 10.1111/conl.12967. Jung, M., Lesiv, M. , Warren-Thomas, E., Shchepashchenko, D. , See, L. , & Fritz, S. (2023). The importance of capturing management in forest restoration targets. Nature Sustainability 10.1038/s41893-023-01192-8.