Description: Das Projekt "Forest dynamics in Switzerland (FORDYNCH) - pattern, driving forces and ecological implications" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Eidgenössische Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft durchgeführt. Whereas deforestation is still a major threat to various ecosystem goods and services worldwide, there is an increasing number of regions and countries, in which the trend in forest cover became reversed, i.e. deforestation gave way to an increase in forest are. This change in trend from decreasing to expanding forest areas has been called 'forest transition' by Mather (1992), a concept, which has been used since then in an impressive series of regional and national studies. Originally, studies on forest dynamics were mainly motivated by concerns about sustainable timber supply. Later, the focus shifted to biodiversity issues, as both decline and expansion in forest area go parallel with changes in biodiversity. Because forests are also important reser-voirs of carbon, the growing interest in national and global carbon accounting triggered the latest wave of studies on forest transition processes. In the proposed project, we intend to reconstruct changes in forest area in Switzerland over the last 160 years based on unique database on forest cover including 7 time steps since the 1840s. Separately, we will conduct a case study for the Canton of Zurich for 333 years based on an additional excellent historical source, i.e. the Gyger-map from 1667. We want to study forest dynamics, search for forest transition processes, but also aim at searching for patterns of change in forest areas, which go beyond the forest transition concept, i.e. recent secondary declines in forest areas due to the expansion of settlements and infrastructure in forested re-gions - a process which has been observed in many densely populated regions globally. In a second part of the study we will determine the main factors driving change in forest cover in Switzerland and on a longer time scale in the Canton of Zurich by combining spatially explicit modelling with explorative landscape historical analyses in an innovative way. In the last part of the study, we aim at assessing the implications of forest cover changes for selected ecosystem goods and services, i.e. biodiversity and carbon sequestration, by combining the data base on forest cover with information taken from the Swiss National Forest Inventory.
SupportProgram
Origin: /Bund/UBA/UFORDAT
Tags: Besiedlung ? Entwaldung ? Waldökologie ? Zürich ? Bundeswaldinventur ? Langzeitwirkung ? Thematische Karte ? Schweiz ? Carbon Accounting ? Landnutzungsänderung ? Kohlenstoffbilanz ? Kohlenstoffsenke ? Sozioökonomie ? Topographie ? Geoinformation ? Waldfläche ? Geodaten ? Biodiversitätsverlust ? Alpen ? Statistische Analyse ? Studie ? Wirkungsanalyse ? Ökosystemforschung ? Modellierung ? Fallstudie ? Globale Veränderung ? Kausalanalyse ? Landschaftsveränderung ? Ökosystemleistung ? Artenvielfalt ? Standortbedingung ? Datenbank ? Wald ? Landschaftsanalyse ? Biodiversität ? Gesellschaftspolitische Aspekte ? CCS-Technologie ? Klima ? Waldgeschichte ? Wiederbewaldungsgeschichte ? driving forces ? forest transition ? Flächengröße ? goods and services ? land cover change ?
License: cc-by-nc-nd/4.0
Language: Englisch/English
Time ranges: 2013-07-01 - 2016-06-30
Accessed 1 times.