Abstract
Huber, R., H. Bugmann, A. Buttler, and A. Rigling. 2013. Sustainable land-use practices in European mountain regions under global change: an integrated research approach. Ecology and Society 18(3): 37. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-05375-180337
Highlights
Mountain ecosystems provide a variety of important goods and services for humans such as food, timber, fresh water, protection from natural hazards, carbon storage, and a range of immaterial functions for recreation and tourism (Messerli and Ives 1997)
The individual articles provide: (1) new scientific findings regarding the impacts of climate and land-use changes on ecosystem processes in three sensitive mountain regions of Switzerland; (2) an assessment of the feedback effects arising from changing socioeconomic and political conditions, land use, and adaptation to climate change, using modeling techniques and transdisciplinary stakeholder interactions; and (3) suggestions for alternative policy solutions to ensure sustainable land use in mountain regions
For people living in European mountain regions, key challenges arising from changes in land use and climate include the marginalization of economic activities such as agricultural and timber production (Gotsch et al 2004, Soliva 2007, Streifeneder et al 2007, Flury et al 2013), increasing water conflicts (Beniston 2012), changes in the protection value of forests (Grêt-Regamey et al 2008), and landscape degradation due to land abandonment or land-use intensification and corresponding loss of biodiversity (MacDonald et al 2000, Zimmermann et al 2010)
Summary
Mountain ecosystems provide a variety of important goods and services for humans such as food, timber, fresh water, protection from natural hazards, carbon storage, and a range of immaterial functions for recreation and tourism (Messerli and Ives 1997). The analysis of the impacts of climate and land-use change on the provision of EGS in mountain regions requires a complex systems approach in which both human and environmental dynamics are studied over a range of spatial. The added value of this approach was threefold: (1) data and models were based on biophysical realism; (2) local tradeoffs could be considered; and (3) comprehensive, critical involvement of stakeholders within the studies was achieved These are important facets that characterize the holistic ideal of ecosystem services research, as concluded from a quantitative review of the recent literature on EGS by Seppelt et al (2011). It aimed to provide an overview and facilitate communication with other scientists (Alberti et al 2011)
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