An assessment of the impact of climate adaptation measures to reduce flood risk on ecosystem services.

Marta Pérez-Soba,Jan Peter Lesschen,Peter H. Verburg,Eric Koomen,Maarten Hilferink

doi:10.1007/s10980-012-9715-6

Abstract

Measures of climate change adaptation often involve modification of land use and land use planning practices. Such changes in land use affect the provision of various ecosystem goods and services. Therefore, it is likely that adaptation measures may result in synergies and trade-offs between a range of ecosystems goods and services. An integrative land use modelling approach is presented to assess such impacts for the European Union. A reference scenario accounts for current trends in global drivers and includes a number of important policy developments that correspond to on-going changes in European policies. The reference scenario is compared to a policy scenario in which a range of measures is implemented to regulate flood risk and protect soils under conditions of climate change. The impacts of the simulated land use dynamics are assessed for four key indicators of ecosystem service provision: flood risk, carbon sequestration, habitat connectivity and biodiversity. The results indicate a large spatial variation in the consequences of the adaptation measures on the provisioning of ecosystem services. Synergies are frequently observed at the location of the measures itself, whereas trade-offs are found at other locations. Reducing land use intensity in specific parts of the catchment may lead to increased pressure in other regions, resulting in trade-offs. Consequently, when aggregating the results to larger spatial scales the positive and negative impacts may be off-set, indicating the need for detailed spatial assessments. The modelled results indicate that for a careful planning and evaluation of adaptation measures it is needed to consider the trade-offs accounting for the negative effects of a measure at locations distant from the actual measure. Integrated land use modelling can help land use planning in such complex trade-off evaluation by providing evidence on synergies and trade-offs between ecosystem services, different policy fields and societal demands.

Highlights

Evidence and awareness of climate change has led to an increasing need to adapt our use of land and other resources to limit risks and vulnerabilities that originate from global change (Adger et al 2005; Foley et al 2005)
Given that land use is central to the state of the environment and is linked to multiple economic sectors it is likely that policies in other fields will affect the effectiveness of adaptation measures while at the same time adaptation measures may provide synergies or trade-offs with other sectors
This paper presented a quantitative approach to analyze this mutual interaction between climate adaptation measures and other policy objectives in the context of a multi-scale analysis of land use dynamics

Summary

Introduction

Evidence and awareness of climate change has led to an increasing need to adapt our use of land and other resources to limit risks and vulnerabilities that originate from global change (Adger et al 2005; Foley et al 2005). The combined effects of land use change and climate change may lead to increased flood risk and changes in ecosystem service delivery (Bouwer et al 2010; Hurkmans et al 2009; Metzger et al 2008). The increasing population densities in floodplain areas together with increased assets located in flood-prone regions leads to an ever-increasing vulnerability of people and financial damage upon flooding (Barredo 2009; de Moel et al 2011). Given these conditions, adaptation and mitigation strategies to reduce flood risk and exposure to flooding are developed (Biesbroek et al 2010). Insight into the possible synergies and tradeoffs may help the design of more integrated policy packages that can be Landscape Ecol (2012) 27:473–486 implemented at the appropriate institutional levels (Helbron et al 2011)

Methods

Results

Conclusion