Managing Climate cHange impacts on land use and EcoSystem Services

The aim of the proposed project “managing Climate cHange impacts on land use and EcoSystem Services” (CHESS) is to re-think land use management paradigms and strategies in the presence of climate change and to suggest modifications to existing strategies to render them functional in future environmental conditions, in particular in a warming climate. We will do so, by (i) adapting an agent-based model (ABM) for climate change driven land use changes recently developed for two representative Austrian case study regions. The ABM relies on relevant agents, primarily land managers such as farms, that make land-use decisions dependent on framework conditions (e.g. agricultural prices and subsidies) as well as intrinsic pref-erences and societal norms that may change over time. It will be implemented under three scenarios considering socio-economy and climate change and will produce predictions for land use change at the very high resolution of land parcels. Thereof we will (ii) derive the climate change and land use change triggered changes in the supply of nine ecosystem services related to high nature value farmland, habitats and species, fragmentation of habitat types, soil protection, insect pollination, C sequestration in soil, soil fertility, agricultural production (plants), and drinking water. Subsequently, we will (iii) identify key challenges, conduct a policy analyses and derive land use management recommendations to increase system resilience and to counteract the loss of ESSs, and (iv) facilitate stakeholder participation and invest in result dissemination in order to increase the applicability of the project results for decision makers and their uptake in environmental research and policy. Thus, CHESS will provide answers to highly relevant policy questions such as which scenarios of land use arise for Austria in concrete terms under different social-economic settings and which adaptation measures are necessary to sustainably con-serve the supply of essential ecosystem services endangered by climate change. This approach will allow to scrutinize syner-gies and trade-offs regarding ESS supply among policy strategies and instruments, e.g. given the use of scenarios that strong-ly consider measures for increasing sustainability and climate change mitigation, we can also provide answer to the question on the required design for such measures so as not to harm or even support other ecosystem services in the long term. Finally, together with stakeholders and land users, we will discuss current Austrian land use management strategies and paradigms, and develop recommendations to reduce CC-driven impacts on ESS-supply.