PARENT SESSION
Organized Oral Session 42: Applying ecological theories to multiple spatio-temporal scales and to different landscapes in Europe
Organizer(s): J Loeffler and U Steinhardt
Thursday, August 11, 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Room 511a, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Carbon pool changes under various scenarios of potential future land-use change in a mountainous region (Switzerland).
Bolliger, Janine*,1, Hagedorn, Frank1, Leifeld, Jens2, Kienast, Felix1, Soliva, Reto1, Rutherford, Gillian1, 1 Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland, Switzerland2 Agroscope FAL, Zürich, Switzerland, Switzerland
ABSTRACT- Long-term trends including depopulation and shifts in agricultural policies and management have been leading to large-scale land-use changes throughout the European Alps. The consequences are spatially segregated and range from land abandonment at higher elevations to intensification of open-land in the lowlands. Various degrees and intensities of land-use change are likely to affect the potential sizes of carbon pools of the respective land-use types. While an extensivation of land and afforestration may act as carbon sinks, an intensivation of land-use may lead to losses of carbon. We assess and quantify potential future effects of land-use change on carbon pools in Switzerland (41,000km2) using three scenarios. The scenarios encompass: (1) a business-as-usual scenario that relies on trends of land-use change observed during the last 20 years, (2) a biodiversity support scenario that assumes optimal management strategies and subsidies for conservation, and (3) a liberalization scenario where no public support is given to agriculture and conservation. Results show that the liberalization scenario results in a rather binary landscape with forests at higher elevations and intensively managed land in the lowlands. The biodiversity support scenario converts large proportions of currently intensively managed land into extensive meadows, and re-afforestation is generally marginal. Implications of each scenario for potential future carbon storage are subsequently discussed.
Key words: agricultural decline, land-use change, carbon pools, scenario-based modelling