Projected environmental shifts under climate change: European trends and regional impacts

Abstract

SUMMARYPotential impacts of climate change on ecosystems and the environment are generally assessed by summarizing climate change scenarios for broad regions (for example countries), or by specific modelling exercises. This paper presents an alternative approach for summarizing climate change impacts on the European environment, by linking climate change scenarios to recognized environmental divisions. Sixteen climate scenarios from four general circulation models were therefore linked to 84 statistically derived strata sharing common environmental features. In this way, the future distribution of the strata, as defined by their climate characteristics, were quantified and mapped. The results show that Europe is likely to experience major environmental shifts, with pronounced regional variations. As expected, environmental strata shift northwards. In particular the southern Mediterranean strata are projected to expand, whereas Atlantic environments remain much more stable. Alpine and Mediterranean mountain environments decline dramatically. However, the Scandinavian zones show no consistent pattern of change. More detailed analysis of four sample regions shows that the impacts of the projected shifts will largely depend on regional characteristics. Environmental conservation, regional assessments and scenario development could therefore be facilitated by combining relevant regional datasets (for example for vegetation, land cover and species distribution) with the shifting environmental strata.

Contribution of advection to the carbon budget measured by eddy covariance at a steep mountain slope forest in Switzerland

“…Due to these non-ideal conditions, EC studies in mountainous ecosystems are rare. However, mountains cover 25% of the world's area (UNEP, 2008) and mountainous ecosystems are supposed to be heavily affected by anthropogenic and climatic impacts (Huber et al, 2005;FAO, 2008;Metzger et al, 2008). Furthermore, forest ecosystems act as an important sink within the global carbon cycle (e.g., Janssens et al, 2003;Luyssaert et al, 2008).…”

Long-term vegetation monitoring in Great Britain – the Countryside Survey 1978–2007 and beyond

“…Because the data were a mixture of variables (for example, altitude) and attributes (for example, geology) the variables were converted into four classes so that the database was suitable for analysis by indicator species analysis (ISA, now TWINSPAN (Hill and Šmilauer, 2005) and stopped at 32 classes. It is recognised that nowadays, with automated data capture, variables can be recorded for millions of 1 km squares, and recent environmental classifications (for example Metzger et al, 2008;Villoslada et al, 2016) have used principal component analysis and clustering. Jones and Bunce (1985) compared classifications of European climate using both methods and concluded that the results were comparable.…”

“…Finally, any inefficiencies in stratifications will be re-flected in higher standard errors for the observed independent variables. The independent tests in papers such as Metzger et al (2008) and Villoslada et al (2016) are all highly significant and any improvements are likely to be marginal. The resulting classes were described on the basis of average values of the environmental characteristics of the initial database, for example, altitude and rainfall (Bunce et al, 1996a, c).…”

Survey of the terrestrial habitats and vegetation of Shetland, 1974 – a framework for long-term ecological monitoring

“…In a European context, Shetland is located in the Atlantic North zone, as described by Metzger et al (2008). The Atlantic environment is relatively stable compared to other regions, and is not expected to change dramatically in extent or location in comparison to other zones .…”