MOUNTLAND

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Sustainable land-use practices in mountain regions: Integrative analysis of ecosystem dynamics under global change, socio-economic impacts and policy implications
Mountain ecosystems provide a large array of goods and services, which are highly sensitive to both climatic and land-use changes. The political system with its policies and governance structures has a crucial role in mitigating the impact of such changes and enhancing sustainable management practices. Therefore, we apply an integrative approach by combining methods of economics, political science and natural sciences to analyze ecosystem functioning and management in mountain regions under climate change.

Aims of the MOUNTLAND project

The primary goal of MOUNTLAND is to contribute to the development of adapted land-use practices and innovative policy solutions for mountain regions that (1) warrant the life-supporting services required for sustainable development, (2) are economically and ecologically efficient, and (3) socially and institutionally feasible.

Concept and challenges of the MOUNTLAND project

In MOUNTLAND, we address the following issues

• ecosystem response of climate change on sensitive natural processes and on their supply of goods & services of mountain ecosystems,

• the socio-economic impact of a change in the selected ecosystems’ goods and services,
• sectoral and cross-sectoral policies to mitigate negative effects on these socio-economic pressures, and
• effects of these policies on land management and the related impacts on the spatio-temporal development of landscapes and their functions.

Based on a concept of a dynamic overall system (Figure 1), we are aiming to close feedback loops between these issues, and thus between ecosystem dynamics, socio-economic assessment of ecosystem goods and services, policy making and its implications on land management.

Further innovative challenges include the

• Integration of plot-based observational and experimental evidence in a modeling framework and upscaling to the landscape level.
• Evaluation of the effects of adapted land use practices on the provision of ecosystem goods and services.
• Identification of innovative policy solutions involving applications of new instruments and required institutional reforms (integration, allocation of competencies) suited to mitigate negative impacts from climate change.

Tasks

MOUNTLAND includes researchers from multiple disciplinary backgrounds, including ecology, socio-economy and political sciences. According to their main focus of investigations, they are organised in three different "Tasks" (see also Figure 1).

• Task 1 includes the ecological research including field investigations, experiments and modelling. Tasks is subdivided according to the tree study study regions with Task 1.1 focusing at the Jura, Task 1.2 at the Valais and Task 1.3 at the Davos study region.
• Task 2 addresses the socio-economic research. It encompasses two major aspects. First, the valuation and change in ecosystem services, and, second, the optimisation modelling with regard to management activities.
• Task 3 concentrates on the political science aspects. The main focuses here lie with the analysis of the relevant political networks and the development of suitable indicators.

Figure 1: Underlying concept of the MOUNTLAND project

Study Regions

Scenarios of ecosystem responses to global changes are modeled for three mountainous case study regions:

• Jura with pasture-woodland ecosystems,
• Central Wallis with drought-sensitive inner Alpine ecosystems, and
• Davos with temperature sensitive high Alpine ecosystems.
  

The three regions differ in terms of their expected sensitivity to climate change, in terms of the relevance of different ecosystem goods and services and in terms of the relevance of different sectoral and cross-sectoral policies.

Figure 2: Study Regions