University of Sheffield
Biosciences

Understanding why nature can take time to respond

When conservation action is taken, the benefits for wildlife and ecosystems may not appear straight away. Equally, the damage caused by drought, pollution or habitat change can take years to become visible. These delays, known as ecological time lags, make it difficult to judge whether interventions are effective and/or identify the true causes of biodiversity loss. As ecologists increasingly use observational data to establish cause-and-effect relationships, new methods are needed to account for these delayed responses.

Duncan’s project will investigate how time lags emerge across ecological systems and develop more reliable methods for measuring their effects. Combining ecological simulations with advanced causal inference techniques, he will first identify how characteristics such as species diversity and food-web structure contribute to delayed responses. He will then develop statistical approaches to quantify these relationships, before applying them to investigate how forests respond to drought.

By accounting for delayed effects, the research could help conservation scientists distinguish between ineffective interventions and those whose benefits have yet to emerge. It could also reveal the lasting impacts of environmental disturbances, supporting more accurate assessments of ecosystem management and better-informed strategies for biodiversity recovery.