Henrik Smith

My research interest concerns both behavioural and conservation ecology, but recently especially the interface between the two disciplines. My early post-graduate research to a large extent concerned evolutionary conflicts and their consequences for mating systems and life-history strategies. My recent focus on biodiversity and conservation research concerns how antropogenic change of the environment affects the behaviour of animals and as a consequence their population dynamics and persistence in heterogeneous landscapes.

I have recently focused on how agricultural intensification and climate change affects meta-communities of interacting organisms and the resulting consequences for ecosystem services. In particular we have developed methods to empirically investigate the effect of agricultural management and landscape structure, and their interaction, on the persistence of mobile organisms in agricultural landscapes. We have investigated how resulting changes in biodiversity affect the ecosystem services pollination and biological control.

I have realized that understanding and mitigating the impacts of global change on biodiversity and ecosystem services requires a cross-disciplinary effort, involving both a scientific understanding of how organisms react to climate and land-use change and how these changes affect the production of ecosystem services, but also modeling at spatial and temporal scales holding beyond the range of historical experience, valuation of ecosystem services and understanding of policy development. In cross-disciplinary research efforts linked to interaction with stakeholders I therefore try to identify societal strategies that combine preservation of biodiversity with climate adaptation and mitigation, e.g. through formulation of agri-environment schemes that benefit biodiversity, ecosystem services and ecosystem resilience.

As director of the Centre of environmental and climate research I am promoting cross-disciplinary research aiming at addressing the most urgent environmental issues in a rapidly changing world. I am engaged in making use of science in society, for example as a member of the executive committee for the Mistra Council for Environmental Evaluation, coordinator of the Lund University “Climate Initiative”, by arranging stakeholder conferences, by producing popularized summarized of research and by giving seminars for the public and other stakeholders.

I am also interested in developing education, and have initiated several new courses addressing environmental issues, as well as developed cross-disciplinary educational programs addressing these issues. In 2002 I received the Lund University pedagogic prize for my development of the new cross-disciplinary education in environmental science. I am also the initiator and subject representative of the new PhD subject environmental science, were students address current environmental issues.