I think this thesis could indeed be useful for our work within WP1.
Could you send us a pdf or at least a summary, so that we can take note
of the approach before the meeting?
> Dear colleagues,
> Concerning the first point (climatic projections), I would like to let
> you know the
> work of one our student Marie Dury, who just presented one week ago an
> analysis
> of the IPCC climate projections for Belgium in the framework of her
> master
> thesis in Geography (or. Climatology). She first tested the quality of
> all available IPCC
> models on the 1970-1999 period by comparing the model outputs over
> Belgium
> with meteorological station data for this period. She then selected
> the best models
> and analysed their projections of future climate in terms of (seasonal
> and annual) means of
> temperature and precipitation, as well as extremes (e.g., number of
> frost days) and variance
> of temperature and precipitations.
> I think this work should be very useful for our purpose.
> Regarding point 6, for plants, we could provide projections of future
> distributions of some
> species in Europe from our mechanistic model, but the evaluation of
> the threat on plant species
> diversity is much more difficult.
> Let me know if you are interested.
> With best regards,
> Louis François
> Etienne Branquart a écrit:
>> Dear colleagues,
>> Please find hereafter the structure of WP1 contribution that should
>> be finalised in the framework of the activities of the 'biodiversity
>> and climate change' forum animated by the Belgian Biodiversity Platform.
>> 1. Climatic projections in Europe, with a focus on Belgium
>> 2. Species adaptability and vulnerability to climate change (e.g.
>> dispersal, demography, ecological plasticity, etc.)
>> 3. Ecosystem adaptability and vulnerability to climate change (incl.
>> resistance/resilience issues)
>> 4. Interactions between climate change and other biodiversity drivers
>> (specialist species endangered)
>> 5. Climate change threats to biodiversity in Europe
>> 6. How much is Belgian biodiversity likely to be affected by climate
>> change at the end of the Century?
>> 7. Consequences for human well-being
>> Most of those points could be easily developed based on a review of
>> recent scientific literature and I'm currently working on it (a first
>> draft will be available for comments and discussion in early October).
>> However, as you know, detailed information for point 6 is rather
>> limited and scientific work should be performed before being able to
>> have a clear vision on species and ecosystems the more at risk in
>> Belgium and on the intensity of species turnover and extinction based
>> on climatic predictions.
>> To go out of the woods, I think we can produce rapidly a first report
>> with rather limited contents for point 6 (+ message addressed to
>> funding bodies that this gap should be filled urgently) and launch in
>> parallel a small working group in charge of gathering information and
>> developing predictive approaches. It could be done for a few
>> taxonomic groups for which detailed distribution data are available
>> at the Belgian scale (e.g. vascular plants, bryophytes?,
>> butterflies, dragonflies, grasshoppers?, fish, amphibians and birds).
>> Work should be purely scientific in a first step, with the objective
>> to produce asap high level scientific publications.
>> Three approaches have been proposed so far in this direction, based
>> on (i) bioclimatic classification (Alain Hambuckers), (ii) species
>> life-history traits (Sandrine Godefroid) and (iii) bioclimatic
>> modelling (Dirk Maes).
>> I would like to ask you if you would agree to be involved in this
>> 'prediction' working group and be present at a discussion meeting to
>> be planned to exchange ideas and share responsibilities. In the
>> affirmative, I'll make this proposal in a few days to the whole forum
>> and ask who is interested to be involved in that working group.
>> Potential dates for a meeting are: October 13, 20, 21 and 24. Thanks
>> to let me know asap if you any preference for some of them?
>> Thank you very much in advance for your contribution. Very best regards,
>> Etienne Branquart
>> Belgian Biodiversity Platform
>> http://www.biodiversity.be
>> PS: Alain, Sandrine and Dirk, would you be so kind to prepare a short
>> description of your approach (from a few lines to maximum 2 pages) to
>> be sent to the forum at the end of this week?
