Swiss alpine summer farming: current status and future development under climate change

High altitude grazing is widespread around the globe and also has a long tradition in European mountain regions. One-third of the Swiss farmland consists of summer pastures: seasonally used marginal pastures without permanent settlements, which extend between the grasslands and forests of permanent mountain settlements and unproductive mountain tops. Farmers’ main motivations for using those pastures have been and still are forage provision and health benefits for grazing animals, benefits for labour distribution between home farm and summer farm, and cultural ecosystem services such as the maintenance of a tradition and the associated lifestyle. Yet, remote pastures are being abandoned and are prone to reforestation, while more productive and accessible pastures are intensified. Those processes are related to changes in management practices, to scarcity of labour and – to a lesser extent – to climate change. We summarise the agronomic and ecological status of Swiss summer pastures, in particular with respect to livestock keeping, biodiversity and climate change, and speculate on future trends of summer farming.

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National natural heritage at risk: The Seven Rila Lakes

Journal of the Bulgarian Geographical Society ◽

10.3897/jbgs.e78709 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 45 ◽

pp. 67-80

Author(s):

Mariyana Nikolova ◽

Peter Nojarov ◽

Stoyan Nedkov

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

At Risk ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Protected Area ◽

Management Practices ◽

Reanalysis Data ◽

High Mountain ◽

Cultural Ecosystem Services ◽

Lake Ecosystems ◽

Natural Heritage

The area of the Seven Rila Lakes is situated in the North-West part of the Rila Mountain at an altitude between 2100 and 2500 m a.s.l. within the borders of Rila National Park. There are 140 glacial lakes in Rila Mountain but the area of the Seven Rila Lakes is the most visited and famous with its natural beauty and sacred significance. It is a valuable part of the national natural heritage. The popularity of this area grows constantly with the number of visitors from the country and abroad. This process leads to the deterioration of the natural conditions in the site. At the same time, it is not clear what is the effect of climate change on the environment in the lake’s area. There are many factors that contribute to the degradation of ecosystems in the protected area of the Seven Rila Lakes and pose risk to this valuable natural heritage. These factors are natural (mainly climate change-related), anthropogenic (associated with the excessive tourist pressures on the ecosystems in the protected area), and management (stemming from the ongoing conservation policy over the years). This study explores to what extent climate change may put at risk the ecosystems of Seven Rila Lakes. Mean monthly data from The European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) ERA5-Land reanalysis were used in this study. The resolution of these data is 0.1 x 0.1 (9 x 9 km) and their period is 1981-2020. Reanalysis data include air temperature, precipitation, evaporation, snow depth, etc. Based on data from various sources such as reanalysis data, in situ measurements, and statistical modeling, a scenario, based on current trends in different climatic elements, has been developed in order to project future changes and their impact on lake ecosystems. The results of the modelling of climate change show that in the coming decades an increase in temperature is expected in the high mountain regions of South-western Bulgaria and in particular in the Seven Rila Lakes area. This, combined with the ever-increasing flow of tourists, and high demand for the provided cultural ecosystem services, and insufficient management practices, put at risk the state of the lakes and their capacity to provide the same quality of cultural ecosystem services in the future, which attracts tourists in the area now. Recommendations have been made for the optimization of the management of the protected area in accordance with the observed trends.

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Sustainability assessment of restoration plans under climate change by using system dynamics: application on Urmia Lake, Iran

Journal of Water and Climate Change ◽

10.2166/wcc.2018.209 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 10 (4) ◽

pp. 938-952 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Elham Ebrahimi Sarindizaj ◽

Mahdi Zarghami

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

System Dynamics ◽

Management Practices ◽

Sustainability Assessment ◽

Ecological Status ◽

Urmia Lake ◽

Water Resources Systems ◽

Proposed Model ◽

Average Water ◽

Basin Water

Abstract During the last decade, Urmia Lake has lost most of its surface area. As a result, finding management practices to restore the sustainable ecological status of Urmia Lake, the world's second largest hyper-saline lake, is imperative. In this study, the sustainability of different plans under climate change was assessed using system dynamics. The plans were evaluated with respect to sustainability criteria including reliability, resiliency, and vulnerability measures. According to the results due to different management practices, on average, water consumption should be reduced by at least 30% to restore the lake. The results revealed that only hybrid plans which incorporate multiple management practices, instead of focusing on just one approach, can be influential. Among the hybrid plans, that of increasing irrigation efficiency, reducing cultivated area, changing crop pattern, and inter-basin water transfer was identified as the most sustainable plan. About eight years after applying this plan, the lake will achieve its ecological level and will remain sustainable. Considering comprehensive factors, the proposed model can help watershed managers to take the necessary measures to restore this vital ecosystem. The results of this study can be applied to water resources systems with the same problem, especially those in semi-arid regions with multidisciplinary aspects.

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Cultural Ecosystem Services—Key to Address Pressing Environmental Concerns of Climate Change and Biodiversity Decline

10.1016/b978-0-12-821139-7.00115-x ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Kamaljit K Sangha

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Environmental Concerns ◽

Cultural Ecosystem Services ◽

Biodiversity Decline

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Risk Reduction and Productivity Increase Through Integrating Arachis pintoi in Cattle Production Systems in the Colombian Orinoquía

Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems ◽

10.3389/fsufs.2021.666604 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 5 ◽

Author(s):

Karen Johanna Enciso Valencia ◽

Álvaro Rincón Castillo ◽

Daniel Alejandro Ruden ◽

Stefan Burkart

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Management Practices ◽

Production Systems ◽

Climate Change Scenarios ◽

Cattle Production ◽

Forage Production ◽

Promising Alternative ◽

Arachis Pintoi ◽

The Impact

In many parts of the foothills of the Orinoquía region of Colombia, cattle production takes place on poorly drained soils. The region is dominated by extensive grazing systems of Brachiaira humidicola cv. Humidicola, a grass with high adaptation potential under temporal waterlogging conditions. Inadequate management practices and low soil fertility result in degradation, however, with important negative effects on pasture productivity and the quality and provision of (soil) ecosystem services–a situation that is likely to worsen in the near future due to climate change. Against this background, AGROSAVIA (Corporación Colombiana de Investigación Agropecuaria) selected Arachis pintoi CIAT 22160 cv. Centauro (Centauro) as a promising alternative for the sustainable intensification of livestock production and rehabilitation of degraded areas. This study assesses dual-purpose milk production in the foothills of the Colombian Orinoquía from an economic perspective. We compare two production systems: the Centauro–Brachiaira humidicola cv. Humidicola association (new system) and Brachiaira humidicola cv. Humidicola as a monoculture (traditional system). We used cashflow and risk assessment models to estimate economic indicators. The projections for economic returns consider changes in forage characteristics under regional climate change scenarios RCP (2.6, 8.5). The LIFE-SIM model was used to simulate dairy production. Results show that the inclusion of Centauro has the potential to increase animal productivity and profitability under different market scenarios. The impact of climatic variables on forage production is considerable in both climate change scenarios. Both total area and potential distribution of Centauro could change, and biomass production could decline. Brachiaira humidicola cv. Humidicola showed better persistence due to higher nitrogen levels in soil when grown in association with Centauro. The legume also provides a number of ecosystem services, such as improving soil structure and composition, and also contributes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This helps to improve the adaptation and mitigation capacity of the system.

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A systematic quantitative review of coastal and marine cultural ecosystem services: Current status and future research

Marine Policy ◽

10.1016/j.marpol.2016.09.004 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 74 ◽

pp. 25-32 ◽

Cited By ~ 43

Author(s):

Carol L. Martin ◽

Salim Momtaz ◽

Troy Gaston ◽

Natalie A. Moltschaniwskyj

Keyword(s):

Ecosystem Services ◽

Current Status ◽

Future Research ◽

Cultural Ecosystem Services ◽

Quantitative Review

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Modeling the Production of Multiple Ecosystem Services from Agricultural and Forest Landscapes in Rhode Island

Agricultural and Resource Economics Review ◽

10.1017/s1068280500007711 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 42 (1) ◽

pp. 251-274 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Tingting Liu ◽

Nathaniel H. Merrill ◽

Arthur J. Gold ◽

Dorothy Q. Kellogg ◽

Emi Uchida

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Land Use ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Land Use Change ◽

Rhode Island ◽

Land Management ◽

Management Practices ◽

Watershed Scale ◽

River Watershed ◽

Change Climate

This study spatially quantifies hydrological ecosystem services and the production of ecosystem services at the watershed scale. We also investigate the effects of stressors such as land use change, climate change, and choices in land management practices on production of ecosystem services and their values. We demonstrate the approach in the Beaver River watershed in Rhode Island. Our key finding is that choices in land use and land management practices create tradeoffs across multiple ecosystem services and the extent of these tradeoffs depends considerably on the scenarios and ecosystem services being compared.

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Cultural ecosystem services of mountain regions: Modelling the aesthetic value

Ecological Indicators ◽

10.1016/j.ecolind.2016.04.001 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 69 ◽

pp. 78-90 ◽

Cited By ~ 68

Author(s):

Uta Schirpke ◽

Florian Timmermann ◽

Ulrike Tappeiner ◽

Erich Tasser

Keyword(s):

Ecosystem Services ◽

Cultural Ecosystem Services ◽

Mountain Regions ◽

Aesthetic Value ◽

The Aesthetic

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BioDiv-Support: scenario-based decision support tool for policy planning and adaptation to future challenges in biodiversity and ecosystem services

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-14412 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Camilla Andersson ◽

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Air Pollution ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Management Practices ◽

Human Impacts ◽

Future Climate ◽

The Arctic ◽

Future Climate Change ◽

Local Stakeholders ◽

The Impact

Biodiversity includes any type of living variation, from the ecosystem level to genetic variation within organisms. The greatest threats to biodiversity is climate change, destruction of habitats and other human activities. High-altitude mountain regions are pristine environments, with historically small impacts from air pollution, but at risk of being disproportionately impacted by climate change. We focus on three mountainous regions: the Scandinavian Mountains, the Guadarrama Mountains in Spain, and the Pyrenees in France, Andorra and Spain. We study the impact of drivers of change of biodiversity such as future climate change, increased incidences of wild fires, emissions from new shipping routes in the Arctic as ice sheets are melting, human impacts on land use and management practices (such as reindeer grazing) and air pollution.We simulate future climate change using WRF and a convective permitting climate model, HARMONIE-Climate, with a spatial resolution of 3km. The high resolution strongly improves the representation of precipitation compared to coarser scale simulations (Lind et al., 2020). We use these simulations to develop future scenarios of air pollution load, using two well established chemistry transport models (MATCH and CHIMERE; Mar&#233;cal et al., 2015). These climate and air pollution scenarios are subsequently used, together with management scenarios, to develop scenarios for biodiversity and ecosystem services. These scenarios are developed applying a process-based dynamic vegetation and biogeochemistry model, LPJ-GUESS (Smith et al., 2014).&#160;The scenarios, representing mid-21st century, will be made available through a web-based planning tool, where local stakeholders in each region can explore the project results to understand how scenarios of climate change, air pollution and policy development will affect these ecosystems. Local stakeholders are involved throughout the project, such as reindeer herder communities, regional county boards and national authorities, and in a time of changing climate and a global pandemic we have learned the necessity for flexibility in such interactions.&#160;ReferencesLind et al. 2020., Climate Dynamics 55, 1893-1912.Mar&#233;cal et al., 2015. Geosci. Mod. Dev. 8, 2777-2813.Smith et al. 2014 Biogeosciences 11, 2027-2054.

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