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Towards a spatially explicit and quantitative vulnerability assessment of environmental change in Europe

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Abstract

Over the next century, society will increasingly be confronted with the impacts of global change (e.g. pollution, land use changes, and climate change). Multiple scenarios provide us with a range of possible changes in socio-economic trends, land uses and climate (i.e. exposure) and allow us to assess the response of ecosystems and changes in the services they provide (i.e. potential impacts). Since vulnerability to global change is less when society is able to adapt, it is important to provide decision makers with tools that will allow them to assess and compare the vulnerability of different sectors and regions to global change, taking into account exposure and sensitivity, as well as adaptive capacity. This paper presents a method that allows quantitative spatial analyses of the vulnerability of the human-environment system on a European scale. It is a first step towards providing stakeholders and policy makers with a spatially explicit portfolio of comparable projections of ecosystem services, providing a basis for discussion on the sustainable management of Europe’s natural resources.

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Notes

  1. We talk about the ‘human-environment system’ to acknowledge the fact that humans, as users, actors and managers of the system are not external, but integral elements of the studied unit. The term reflects the importance of the system’s social, ecological and economic features alike. Various other terms have been coined to name such systems, e.g. ‘nature-society system’ (Kates et al. 2001), ‘eco-social system’ (Waltner-Toews et al. 2003), ‘linked social-ecological system’ (Walker et al. 2002); and processes in such systems have been called ‘civilisation–nature interactions’ (Petschel-Held et al. 1999).

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Acknowledgments

This paper was commissioned and supported by the EU funded Fifth framework programme AVEC (Integrated Assessment of Vulnerable Ecosystems under Global Change (EVK2-2001-000974). The underlying work was carried out as part of the EU funded Fifth Framework project ATEAM (Advanced Terrestrial Ecosystem Assessment and Modelling, Project No. EVK2-2000-00075). Many members in the consortium contributed to the discussions that helped shape the work in this paper. We especially want to thank Sönke Zaehle, Alberte Bondeau and Pascalle Smith who worked long hours to provide the carbon storage data by the earliest possible date. We also thank Jo House, Rik Leemans, Anne de la Vega-Leinert, the subject editor and two anonymous referees for providing valuable comments on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Plant Production Systems Group, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 430, 6700 AK, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Marc J. Metzger

  2. Environmental Systems Analysis Group, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Marc J. Metzger

  3. Department of Global Change and Natural Systems, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, P.O. Box 60 12 03, 14412, Potsdam, Germany

    Dagmar Schröter

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  1. Marc J. Metzger
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Correspondence to Marc J. Metzger.

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Metzger, M.J., Schröter, D. Towards a spatially explicit and quantitative vulnerability assessment of environmental change in Europe. Reg Environ Change 6, 201–216 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-006-0020-2

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