Summary
This chapter presents a summary of the preliminary results on vulnerability and adaptations assessments in the forest and coastal resources sectors of Venezuela. The Holdridge Life Zone Classification Model was used, and the entire country of Venezuela was selected as study site. The results of the vulnerability assessment show very clearly that, in Venezuela, vegetation will suffer from drier climate patterns. Adaptation strategies in Venezuela to reduce possible forest damage from climate change are being analyzed for forest plantations and for the natural reserve forests based on the life zones identified by the Holdridge model. The IPCC common methodology for assessing the vulnerability of coastal areas to sea level rise proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was used to study five Venezuelan areas. The most vulnerable areas for both erosion and flooding are the eastern coast of Maracaibo Lake, the Barlovento region, and the eastern coast of Falcon State. Under a 0.5 m sea level rise scenario, the total land lost by erosion would be 32.91 km2, and under a 1.0 m sea level rise scenario, total land lost would be 47.00 km2. Land lost from flooding would be 52.63 km2 and 77.74 km2 respectively.
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Perdomo, M., de Lourdes Olivo, M., Bonduki, Y., Mata, L.J. (1996). Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessments for Venezuela. In: Smith, J.B., Huq, S., Lenhart, S., Mata, L.J., Nemešová, I., Toure, S. (eds) Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change. Environmental Science and Technology Library, vol 8. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3653-4_17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3653-4_17
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