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Land-use changes effects on floods are investigated by a multi-scale modelling study, where runoff generation in catchments of different sizes, different land uses and morphological characteristics are simulated in a nested manner. The macro-scale covers the Rhine basin (excluding the alpine part), the upper meso-scale covers various tributaries of the Rhine and three lower meso-scale study areas (100-500 km 2 ) represent different characteristic land-use patterns. The main innovation is the combination of models at different scales and at different levels of process representation in order to account for the complexity of land-use change impacts for a large river basin.The results showed that the influence of land-use on storm runoff generation is stronger for convective storm events with high precipitation intensities than for long advective storms with low intensities. The simulated flood increase at the lower meso-scale for a scenario of rather strong urbanization is in the order of 0 and 4% for advective rainfall events, and 10-30% for convective rain storms with a return period of 2-10 years.Convective storm events, however, are of hardly any relevance for the formation of floods in the large river basins of Central Europe, because the extent of convective rainstorms is restricted to local occurrence. Due to the dominance of advective precipitation for macro-scale flooding, limited water retention capacity of antecedent wet soils and superposition of flood waves from different tributaries, the land-use change effects at the macro-scale are even smaller, for example at Cologne (catchment area 100 000 km 2 ), land-use change effects may result in not more than 1-5 cm water level of the Rhine. Water retention measures in polders along the Upper and Lower Rhine yield flood peak attenuation along the Rhine all the way down to the Dutch border between 1 and 15 cm.

A stakeholder dialogue was embedded in the ATEAM project to facilitate the development and dissemination of its European-wide vulnerability assessment of global change impacts. Participating stakeholders were primarily ecosystem managers and policy advisers interested in potential impacts on 'Agriculture', 'Forestry', 'Water', 'Carbon storage', 'Biodiversity' and 'Mountain environments' sectors. First, stakeholder dialogue approaches to integrated assessment are introduced. Methodological considerations on stakeholder selection and dialogue implementation and evaluation follow. The dialogue content and process are evaluated from the perspectives of stakeholders and scientists. Its usefulness in the research process and the relevance of outcomes for stakeholders are particularly considered. The challenging compromises required to perform innovative research, which seeks to achieve both peer scientific credibility and societal relevance, are emphasized. Effective stakeholder dialogues play a substantial role in raising the visibility and meaningfulness of vulnerability assessments as critical means to improve awareness on global change and its potential worrying impacts on society. They further provide scientists with critical information on ecosystem management and sectoral adaptive capacity. These processes of mutual learning and knowledge exchange moreover foster a better understanding of the potential and limits of global change modelling and vulnerability assessment for policy and ecosystem management.

Biodiversity is essential for multiple aspects of human life and well-being, but many current assessments of the functioning of biodiversity and ecosystems, understanding of risks posed by environmental change and the best practice of their management of ecosystems are lacking a unified scientific and conceptual basis. Methods such as scenario analysis, and terms such as ecosystem services, are widely used, but their meaning is understood in many different ways depending on context, user needs and experience of researchers. In order to advance the conceptual basis for ecosystem analysis and management in a rapidly changing world, as well as the ability of young scientists to reflect upon these concepts, we have organised five 2-week-long summer schools in Peyresq, a remote village in the Southern French Alps. In total 173 participants have worked intensively with 69 experienced researchers and a team of conveners and tutors in order to discuss a broad range of views on topics on ecosystem analysis and functioning. Topics ranged from conditions of and threats to various ecosystems due to environmental change, models and scenarios for assessment, stakeholder perceptions and needs for information, to the social and economic contexts for biodiversity. We report our experience from these schools, present the training concept which has emerged from them and suggest lines of further development.

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