WaldBIOLOG – Biodiversity in Austrian Forests under Climate Change
Within the project WaldBIOLOG the status, as well as the identification of trends of the Austrian forest biodiversity in climate change will be assessed. This will be done by recalculating the forest biodiversity index.
By means of an intensive expert research and a participatory process in the forest dialogue, in cooperation with the project partners, the indicators for forest biodiversity will be revised and monitoring measures will be proposed. Based on the revised indicators, a recommended course of action for the management of forest ecosystems will be developed together with the project partners, taking into account valuable findings from the Forest Ecological Service Platform project and the defined management measures to promote forest biodiversity. In addition, the project contents will be prepared and communicated in a target group-oriented manner by means of innovative approaches.
Background
Climate change is a major challenge for forest management and biodiversity conservation. Especially the higher elevations will be affected by the steady rise in temperature. At the same time, climate extremes such as heavy precipitation and drought are expected to increase in frequency. A temporal shift of precipitation from summer to winter is also expected, which could strongly affect Austrian forests.
The consequences of climate change, which are already visible today, have regionally drastic consequences for forest ecosystems as well as their management and increase the demands for conservation, restoration and sustainable use of ecosystems. Therefore, limiting warming to the Paris climate targets are important prerequisites for sustainable forest management and the protection of biodiversity according to the Forest Law.
Results and outputs
The aim of the funded project “Waldbiolog” is, in particular, the identification of trends on Austrian forest biodiversity in the context of climate change and the revision of the forest biodiversity indicators in a participatory process. In addition, recommendations for the management of forest ecosystems will be developed. Within this, group-oriented knowledge transfer, media processing, and distribution of the projects contents and results will be conducted.
