scholarly journals National natural heritage at risk: The Seven Rila Lakes

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.

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

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Herzog ◽  
Irmi Seidl
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Ecological Status ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Future Trends ◽  
Cultural Ecosystem Services ◽  
Mountain Regions ◽  
European Mountain ◽  
Summer Farm

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.

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

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.

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

2013 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 251-274 ◽  
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.

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

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

<p>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.</p><p>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; Marécal 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). </p><p>The scenarios, representing mid-21<sup>st</sup> 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.</p><p> </p><p>References</p><p>Lind et al. 2020., Climate Dynamics 55, 1893-1912.</p><p>Marécal et al., 2015. Geosci. Mod. Dev. 8, 2777-2813.</p><p>Smith et al. 2014 Biogeosciences 11, 2027-2054.</p>

The Influence of Changing Conservation Paradigms on Identifying Priority Protected Area Locations

2011 ◽  
pp. 286-302
Author(s):  
Alan Grainger
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
Carbon Cycling ◽  
Conservation Planning ◽  
Protected Area ◽  
Forest Degradation ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
Mitigate Climate Change ◽  
Hydrological Services

Conservation planning for climate change adaptation is only one in a long sequence of conservation paradigms. To identify priority locations for protected areas it must compete with three other contemporary paradigms: conservation of ecosystem services, optimizing conservation of ecosystem services and poverty alleviation, and reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. This chapter shows how conservation paradigms evolved, discusses the merits of different approaches to modelling potential impacts of climate change on biodiversity, and describes the hybrid BIOCLIMA model and its application to Amazonia. It then discusses conservation planning applications of the three other contemporary paradigms, illustrated by examples from Amazonia and Kenya. It finds that rapid paradigm evolution is not a handicap if earlier paradigms can be nested within later ones. But more sophisticated planning tools are needed to identify optimal locations of protected areas when climate is changing, and to use protection to mitigate climate change. These should encompass the complex interactions between biodiversity, hydrological services, carbon cycling services, climate change, and human systems.

Assessing cultural ecosystem services of a large marine protected area through social media photographs

2019 ◽  
Vol 176 ◽  
pp. 40-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jared Retka ◽  
Paul Jepson ◽  
Richard J. Ladle ◽  
Ana C.M. Malhado ◽  
Felipe A.S. Vieira ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Protected Area ◽  
Marine Protected Area ◽  
Cultural Ecosystem Services

scholarly journals Cultural ecosystem services for development of nature-based tourism in Bulgaria

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 81-87
Author(s):  
Mariyana Nikolova ◽  
Velimira Stoyanova ◽  
Desislava Varadzhakova ◽  
Aleksandra Ravnachka
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Distribution ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Ecosystem Approach ◽  
Cultural Ecosystem Services ◽  
Natural Heritage ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Different Types ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Rich

The rich and diverse Natural Heritage of Bulgaria is a prerequisite for the development of nature- based tourism (NBT) of a new type. The research is carried out by the implementation of the ecosystem approach. The results include an assessment of the natural heritage capacity to provide goods and services for the development of NBT in the Tourist Regions (TR) of Bulgaria. The results show the spatial distribution of the natural heritage sites in all nine TR in Bulgaria and their natural capacity for development of different types of NBT. There are only 37 municipalities out of 265 with not a one Natural Heritage (NH) site, and all the rest have natural resources to develop NBT. The results can be of use for the achievement of the goals for sustainable tourism by assessment of the capacity to provide recreation ecosystem services (RES).

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document