ateam - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

ATEAM final report Section 5 and 6 (2001-2004) 53
Table 14 Example of changing ecosystem service (grain yield in t ha -1 a -1 ) supply in four grid cells and two different
environments between two time slices (t and t+1). The potential to supply the ecosystem service decreases over time in
environment 1 (green shading), and increases over time in environment 2 (blue shading). The “Value in a grid cell” is the
ecosystem service supply under global change conditions as estimated by an ecosystem model. The relative change in
ecosystem service may not form a good basis for analysing regional potential impacts, in this example it is always –20%.
When changes are stratified by their environment, comparison of potential impacts in their specific environmental context is
possible. The “Stratified potential impact” is the “Value in a grid cell” divided by the “Highest ecosystem service value” in a
specific Environmental Zone at a specific time slice (see text). Note that there is a small risk of ‘false’ zero or positive change
in potential impacts when the stratification is used (e.g. grid cell B, see text).
Environmental Zone
environment 1
environment 2
Grid cell
grid cell A
grid cell B
grid cell C
grid cell D
Time slice
t
t+1
t
t+1
t
t+1
t
t+1
Value in grid cell (t ha -1 a -1 )
3.0
2.4
1.0
0.8
8.0
6.4
5.0
4.0
Absolute change (t ha -1 a -1 )
0.6
0.2
1.6
1.0
Relative change (%)
-20
-20
-20
-20
Highest ecosystem service
value, ESref (t ha -1 a -1 )
3.0
2.7
3.0
2.7
8.0
8.8
8.0
8.8
Stratified potential impact,
PIstr
1.0
0.9
0.3
0.3
1.0
0.7
0.6
0.5
Change in potential impact,
∆PI
-0.1
0.0
-0.3
-0.1
6.2.5.2 The Environmental Classification of Europe (EnC)
A new Environmental Classification of Europe (EnC) is used to interpret ecosystem service changes in
their environmental context. The EnC was developed in 2002 (Figure 40; Metzger et al. 2004a, in
collaboration with the Wageningen research institute Alterra 36 ). This classification forms the spine of the
Vulnerability Assessment framework for two reasons:
• It allows us to stratify potential impacts (see previous section; Metzger and Schröter 2004);
• It allows the Vulnerability Assessment framework to be applied in other studies at various
scales (Metzger et al. 2004b).
The distribution of environmental zones shift with shifting environments. A specific discriminant function
for each EnC class based on variables available form the climate change scenarios was created to
calculate the distribution of each zone for future scenarios. Figure 41 shows how the Environmental
Zones shift for one of the scenarios.
The UK Countryside survey (http://www.cs2000.org.uk/; Haines-Young et al., 2000) has shown how a
statistically derived environmental classification can be used to integrate and summarize different forms
of ecological data (e.g. field samples, satellite imagery, modelling results). Within ATEAM, climate and
land use change scenarios were analysed using the EnC. Summarizing the scenarios per
Environmental Zone makes differences in variability and trends in the scenarios across the European
environment apparent, e.g. between Atlantic North and Mediterranean North (Figure 42). Similar
36 Alterra - Alterra is part of Wageningen University and Research Centre and closely co-operates with the department of
Environmental Sciences from Wageningen University. http://www.alterra.wur.nl/UK/organisatie/