Climate change will have a significant impact on the ecosystem services provided by forests, water, and agriculture in Switzerland across all sectors, both temporally and spatially. An interactive dashboard visualizes hotspots of these changes under two climate scenarios (RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5) and supports the development of targeted adaptation strategies. This approach thus provides an initial geographical assessment of climate change vulnerability. The dashboard is based on the models of the FORTE, ForClim and AquaREL apps and was developed by the University of Geneva in collaboration with EBP.
Select a climate scenario and a spatial resolution to see how ecosystem services are changing. The maps help you identify regions whose ecosystem services are particularly affected by climate change
What challenges exist in cross-sectoral considerations? ¶
- Cross-sector management plans for multiple ecosystem services are a key challenge for decision-makers.
- This requires an understanding of the interactions between services and the inclusion of interdisciplinary data.
- Map-based visualizations and spatial correlations help to identify interactions between ecosystem services.
- Spatio-temporal covariability only shows simultaneous patterns, but no causal relationships or mechanistic modes of action.
- The selection of services considered strongly influences the results and often depends on data availability.
- The spatial scale has a significant influence on the interpretation of interactions.
Contact ¶
This work was funded by the National Centre for Climate Services NCCS and carried out as part of the programme “Decision Support for Dealing with Climate Change in Switzerland (NCCS-Impacts)” as part of the project “Impacts of climate change on ecosystem services”.