Microsoft Research and
the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) have launched open source technology that allows scientists to simulate how all organisms on earth interact in a changing environment.
The technology, Madingley, launched by Microsoft’s Computational Science Lab and UNEP’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) could help scientists and policy makers now to be able to answer crucial questions previously unanswerable.
UNEP Executive Director, Achim Steiner, said the technology would improve understanding of the causes and impacts of degradation, helping scientists and governments develop avoidance and mitigation measures.
“The model is the first to couple all of the key biological processes and ecological theory that underpin the life cycle and behaviour of living organisms.
“Organisms from energy acquisition, to feeding metabolism, reproduction, dispersal and earth,’’ Steiner said in a statement issued in Nairobi.
The Microsoft and UNEP-WCMC team developed the first computer model able to simulate how all organisms interact on a global scale.
The Madingley Model creates a simulation of life on Earth, following a set of basic ecological tools found in the real world.
Steiner said anthropogenic activities are causing widespread degradation of ecosystems worldwide; threatening the ecosystem services upon all life depends.
“Madingley is an exciting new technology which offers the scientific community and world leaders a vital tool to predict how unsustainable development pathways would affect the natural world,’’ Steiner said.
The Madingley model is able to provide this long-term, predictive and truly global insight previously lacking in other models.
The Microsoft and UNEP-WCMC team said the solution is able to assess and predict human impacts on a diverse range of ecosystems.
It can be applied to any ecosystem, marine or terrestrial, and can be applied at any scale from local to global.
“Our model is a first working version which will hopefully encourage other scientists to become involved in developing this, or analogous, global models of life,’’ said Drew Purves.
Purves is the head of the Computational Ecology and Environmental Science group (CEES) and co-author of the initiative.
They will, for example, be able to show what will happen to an ecosystem if bees become extinct.
They will be able to show decision makers how our world will look if action is not taken to safeguard our planet’s future.
According to the statement, the team first simulated the physical Earth with continents, oceans and a global climate, before inserting digital organisms.