Adaptive measures for mountain Mediterranean forest ecosystem services under climate and land cover change in the Mont-Ventoux regional nature park, France

Abstract

Climate change (CC) and land use and land cover change (LULCC) threaten Mediterranean forests and the ecosystem services (ES) they provide. In complex socio-ecological systems and under high uncertainties, the resilience of ES has become the target objective for adaptive management strategies driven by decision-makers and local stakeholders. This work develops an integrative and territorial approach to combining biophysical modeling and local managers' assessments to elaborate scenarios of LULCC in response to climate and socioeconomic changes. It also evaluates the impacts of forest ecosystem changes on coupled ES for different time horizons for a case study of the mountain Mediterranean forests of Mont-Ventoux regional nature park. The results demonstrate first that the future ES provisions predicted by biophysical modeling in this area are less affected by CC than expected by local managers. Furthermore, LULCC increases the changes in ES provision and accentuates the difference between climate scenarios. These results originate from a combination of two effects: (1) pessimistic predictions by local managers and, as a consequence, and (2) anticipatory actions that tend to reinforce or even accelerate the expected changes in the mountain Mediterranean forest area.

Keywords

Mountain Mediterranean forests; Ecosystem services; Climate change; Adaptive scenarios; Socio-ecological approach

Published in

Regional Environmental Change
2021, volume: 21, number: 1, article number: 12
Publisher: SPRINGER HEIDELBERG

SLU Authors

• López-García, Noelia

  • Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Global goals (SDG)

SDG13 Climate action
SDG15 Life on land

UKÄ Subject classification

Forest Science
Ecology

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-020-01732-4

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/110528