水平扫描技术及其在生态学中的应用前景

水平扫描是一项在计算科学、工程和医学等领域被广泛应用的技术，其原理即是对潜在的新兴事物、威胁、机遇和技术体系进行系统检查。该技术自2008年被引入生态学领域以来，迅速在生物多样性和生态安全监管研究中展现出广阔的应用潜力。水平扫描技术不仅有助于政府决策层与管理机构积极面对各种在未来难以预测的生态环境风险，进而在制定和实施与生态环境检测和保护等相关的政策措施时更加谨慎、全面和有据可依，而且能够提升政府和环保部门应对与生态环境变化密切相关的重大突发性事件的能力。目前，我国在利用水平扫描进行生态环境风险评估、生物多样性保护和生物安全检测等领域的应用研究或报道还处于空白。在全球化导致重大生态环境事件突发风险日益增加的背景下，国内的生态学研究机构和团队可优先在外来物种入侵监管、重大地质灾害、环境生态安全和生物多样性丧失这四个领域进行水平扫描研究，以应对当前日益严峻的生态环境保护形势。

The horizon scanning technology and its application prospect in Ecology

There is a long tradition of practitioners and researchers considering what might happen in the future. However, in most areas, including biodiversity conservation and environmental ecology, this has usually been done unsystematically. One reason for this is that issues appear unexpectedly, many of which were foreseeable with the benefit of hindsight. The failure to identify and respond appropriately to potential forthcoming issues will result in policymakers making unwise decisions. As an emerging and future-oriented technology, horizon scanning is such a powerful tool that can be used to inform the strategic decisions of companies, non-governmental and governmental organizations. It not only provides a view of key future issues and the actors involved along with their potential interactions, but also help to identify the major (scientific and political) questions that require answers in order to make strategies more robust and resilient. As a matter of fact, horizon scanning was initially utilized in engineering, computational science and medical industry. But over the past decade, together with other future-oriented methods such as foresight and technology assessment, horizon scanning has been increasingly recognized as part of forward-looking government processes in addressing the diversity of societal and environmental challenges of the future and potential emerging issues in science and technology, particularly across Europe. Horizon scanning is essentially the systematic search for incipient trends, opportunities and risks that may affect the probability of achieving management goals and objectives to inform the strategic decisions of companies, non-governmental and governmental organizations. Since horizon scanning was introduced into ecological and related research areas in the last two years, the technology has shown tremendous application prospects in monitoring biodiversity and ecological security assessment. When performed and evaluated objectively, horizon scanning can identify the potential benefits, threats and opportunities about forthcoming issues and technological developments based on contemporary research and available evidence, thereby allowing policymakers and practitioners to establish more prudential, robust and resilient programs and strategies correlated with the dynamics of ecological environments. This consequently can help the government and organizations to make more positive responses to various ecological problems in the future, and promote their capability to respond to key emerging issues closely associated with the changes of ecological circumstances. However, in China there is a lack of relevant research or report on the application of horizon scanning technology to risk assessment of the ecological environment, biodiversity conservation and bio-security management. Through horizon scanning, researchers can then decide which issues might be of utmost importance for study, and practitioners can also use horizon scanning to ensure timely policy development and proactive research areas. In the face of increasing ecological and environmental threats at a global scale, we think that it is indispensable for Chinese ecological and research organizations to initiate horizon scanning research in four key areas: invasive species management, momentous geological disasters, environmental and ecological security and biodiversity loss, in order to mitigate serious situations and pressure on ecological environment.