Climate risk of the terrestrial habitats of the Basque Country
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. No specific regional analysis on the impact of climate change on the biodiversity of the CAPV had been carried out at that time. Therefore, the calculation of climate risk was approached from an ecosystem approach, based on habitats assuming that being the species dependent on their habitat, this approach would allow to carry out a climate risk analysis with a regional perspective, evaluating how stable the set of habitats can be and helping to establish priorities in the management of natural heritage.
The climate risk methodology had to be developed from the beginning applying the recommendations of reference agencies in adaptation to climate change such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2014). The main innovation of this project was to develop a quantitative methodology based on geospatial data to assess the climate risk of terrestrial habitats of the CAPV based on regionalised climate scenarios (CPR 8.5 and period 2071-2100) for the CAPV (Ihobe, 2017). The reference mapping as well as the base maps are nourished by the existing information in GeoEuskadi (Infrastructure of Spatial Data of the Basque Country).
This work was developed over 2 years and had the participation of a monitoring committee composed of experts in natural heritage management that was contrasting and consensual the different steps of the methodology. The detailed description can be found in the specific document "Methodology for the calculation of the climate risk of terrestrial habitats in the Basque Country. Implementation in the Natura 2000 network" (Ihobe, 2021).
40 terrestrial habitats, 27 Habitats of Community Interest (according to the Habitats and Birds Directives) and 13 Habitats of Regional Interest (according to their EUNIS classification) were assessed, representing 97 % of the total area occupied by these habitats in the CAPV and 98 % of the Natura 2000 area, and therefore their results would be considered representative of their regional situation.
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