Biogeography in the anthropocene

Abstract der Sitzung

Biodiversity loss and climate change are the major challenges for humanity in the Anthropocene (as recently publicly discussed by the IPCC and IPBES) that will likely change and redistribute populations, species and even entire ecosystems throughout our planet. Biogeography has the tools to help us understand fundamental aspects of the natural world, from the tropics to the poles and from marine to terrestrial systems. Indeed, Biogeography can inform us about the mechanisms and processes leading to the generation of biodiversity by studying distributions of biological life in space and time. Thereby, it is important to understand which drivers govern biodiversity at different spatial and temporal scales, from the individual level to global scales and from short timeframes to millions of years. To tackle the major challenges of our times, Biogeography assesses how human-induced global change will affect biodiversity in terms of future distributions that might lead to the irreversible loss of populations, species and entire ecosystems.

This session intends to bring together biogeographers from across the board working on different aspects of biodiversity, spatial and temporal scales as well as different realms of the natural world. We believe Biogeography has the potential to give answers to fundamental questions of how the natural world works but also to address the pressing problems of our times, among others, human-induced global change encompassing climate change, land use change and habitat destruction as well as biological invasions. From Alexander von Humboldt to the present, biogeographic developments have revolutionized how we think about nature. Now, this type of revolutionary thinking is needed to provide humanity with a pathway to a sustainable future.