 Robust modelling of the impacts of climate change on the habitat suitability of forest tree speciesDaniele de Rigo, Giovanni Caudullo, Jesús San-Miguel-Ayanz and José I. Barredo MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Abstract: In Europe, forests play a strategic multifunctional role, serving economic, social and environmental purposes. However, forests are among the most complex systems and their interaction with the ongoing climate change – and the multifaceted chain of potential cascading consequences for European biodiversity, environment, society and economy – is not yet well understood. The JRC PESETA project series proposes a consistent multi-sectoral assessment of the impacts of climate change in Europe. Within the PESETA II project, a robust methodology is introduced for modelling the habitat suitability of forest tree species (2071-2100 time horizon). Abies alba (the silver fir) is selected as a case study: a main European tree species often distributed in bioclimatically complex areas, spanning over various forest types and with multiple populations adapted to different conditions. The modular modelling architecture is based on relative distance similarity (RDS) estimates which link field observations with bioclimatic patterns, projecting their change under climate scenarios into the expected potential change of suitable habitat for tree species. Robust management of uncertainty is also examined. Both technical and interpretation core aspects are presented in an integrated overview. The semantics of the array of quantities under focus and the uneven sources of uncertainty at the continental scale are discussed (following the semantic array programming paradigm), with an effort to offer some minimal guidance on terminology, meaning and methodological limitations not only of the proposed approach, but also of the broad available literature – whose heterogeneity and partial ambiguity might potentially reverberate at the science-policy interface. ► How to cite: ◄ de Rigo, D., Caudullo, G., San-Miguel-Ayanz, J, Barredo, J.I., 2017. Robust modelling of the impacts of climate change on the habitat suitability of forest tree species. Publication Office of the European Union, Luxembourg. 58 pp. ISBN:978-92-79-66704-6 , https://doi.org/10.2760/296501 Keywords: Abies alba; array of factors; artificial neural networks; bioclimatic predictors; climate change; climate change impacts and adaptation assessment; change factor; data-transformation modelling; data uncertainty; diversity; environmental modelling; Europe; extrapolation uncertainty; forest resources; free scientific software; free software; fuzzy; GDAL; genetic diversity; geospatial; Geospatial Semantic Array Programming; GNU bash; GNU/Linux; GNU Octave; habitat suitability; integrated modelling; integration techniques; Mastrave modelling library; Maximum Habitat Suitability; modelling uncertainty; multiplicity; PESETA series; Python; regional climate models; Relative Distance Similarity; robust modelling; Semantic Array Programming; semantic constraints; semantics; spatial disaggregation; SRES-A1b; tree species habitat suitability (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:78623 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.