Climate Change Adaptation Potentials of Forest in Bhutan - Building Human Capacity and Knowledge Base (BC CAP II)
Abstract
Climate change in mountain ecosystems has a particularly high potential to cause severe declines in provisioning of ecosystem services. Combined with their location in a region forming a tipping element in the Earth’s climate system and having low economic resilience, the Himalayan region is particularly prone to severe consequences of climate change. This is true for Bhutan, one of the least developed land-locked mountainous countries. Climate change results in plant species range shifts with concomitant changes in ecosystem services, occurring through catastrophic regime shifts or altered disturbance regimes. Such altered disturbance regimes put strong threats to the resilience to Himalayan forests. Warming trends in the Himalayas are reported to be stronger than for other regions and show a consistent trend for the last century. Annual or supra-annual monsoon failures pose risks to livelihoods in this region. Drought stress is likely to synergistically increase the risk of biotic disturbances as well as the frequency and intensity of forest fires. Developing and adopting a strategy for increasing the resilience against climate change risks is a major determinant for the future consequences of climate change on livelihoods. Particularly for countries like Bhutan with very steep, erodible terrain and low economic resilience, this holds also true for forests. Knowledge of how to increase resilience of the different forest ecosystems is critically important. This includes better understanding of stress tolerances, including belowground functional biodiversity associated with the main tree species. With this project, which is is a continuation of BC-CAP, the potential for climate adaptation and mitigation measures in forests will be determined and concrete activities will be initiated to increase the resilience of forests to future changes. Forest restoration strategies and activities for increasing carbon stocks as well as combating species losses, particularly on degraded lands, will be further developed using participative tools. A strong focus on capacity building, e.g. through in-country courses and workshops as well as through formal academic education through the mountain forestry master course at BOKU will guarantee long term sustainability of inputs and ownership of knowledge and activities.
Publikationen
Project staff
Georg Gratzer
Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.nat.techn. Georg Gratzer
georg.gratzer@boku.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 47654-91215
Project Leader
01.10.2016 - 30.11.2018
BOKU partners
External partners
Ugyen Wangchuck Institute for Conservation and Environment
Dr. Nawang Norbu
partner
Watershed Management Division, Department of Forest and Park Services
Dr. Pema Wangda
partner