Evolution of the bioclimatic units of the Basque Country in climate change scenarios
Description
The project is part of the Energy Transition and Climate Change Plan 2021-2024 of the Basque Government (Basque Government, 2021), which includes among its 15 flagship initiatives to promote a “resilient Basque Natura 2000 network that favors climate neutrality”, helping to increase the resilience of the territory while facilitating the path to the neutrality of the territory.
In 2017, the project “Vulnerability and adaptation to climate change of the Natura 2000 Network in the CAPV” was initiated within the framework of the KLIMATEK R & D projects (innovation and demonstration projects in adaptation to climate change) promoted by the Basque Government. Since no specific analyses had been carried out at the regional level on the incidence of climate change on the biodiversity of the CAPV up to that time, the calculation of climate risk was addressed from an ecosystem approach, based on habitats assuming that as the species dependent on their habitat, this approach would allow a diagnosis with a regional perspective.
The bioclimatic analysis is a useful tool to address the diagnosis for the adaptation to climate change of the natural heritage when there are no specific climate risk analysis since it helps to infer the current and future potential distribution of the species and allows to appreciate the magnitude of the changes expected under climate change scenarios. In addition, it can facilitate the interpretation of climate risk outcomes from an ecological perspective. For this, climate data (temperature, precipitation) of regionalised climate scenarios for the CAPV, Scenarios I (Ihobe, 2017) and Scenarios II (Ihobe, 2019) were used.
Bioclimatology is ecological science that studies the relationship between climate and species distribution since for many ecosystems the distribution limits can be defined from the combinations of temperature and precipitation, documented in abundant literature. For the Basque Country, the approach of Rivas-Martínez was used as the most recent, adjusted and for which there is more detailed information.
The detailed description of the methodology and the reflection on the results obtained in the cartography can be found in the specific document “Bioclimatic analysis of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country in climate change scenarios”. In addition, there is a GIS tool (designed with the ArcMap program, main component of the set of geospatial processing programs ArcGIs of ESRI) that allows to perform the calculations using the different types of climatic scenarios that can be generated in the future that is accompanied by a guide of use "Tool for the bioclimatic classification of the CAPV. Guide to use.
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