Re: biodiversity and climate change

[Sandrine Godefroid]

Dear Louis,

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?

Best regards,

Sandrine


Louis Francois a écrit :

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?

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Dr. Sandrine Godefroid
National Botanic Garden of Belgium
Domein van Bouchout
B-1860 Meise
Phone: 02/260.09.20 (ext. 275)
Fax: 02/260.09.45
e-mail: sandrine....@br.fgov.be
Website: www.botanicgarden.be