Periodic Reporting for period 1 - wildE (Climate-smart rewilding: ecological restoration for climate change mitigation, adaptation and biodiversity support in Europe)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2023-01-01 do 2024-06-30
The wildE project introduces ‘climate-smart rewilding’ as an innovative approach to create biodiversity and climate benefits while also addressing other socio-environmental needs. The project develops a research and innovation programme addressing the climate-biodiversity nexus in tight association with the socio-economic dimension of large-scale ecological restoration. It also projects scenarios to assess Europe’s rewilding potentials under diverse land-use and climate change futures. The goal is to develop tangible and readily accessible decision-support and management guidelines that enable policymakers, conservation managers, communities, and the private sector to co-construct climate-smart rewilding strategies as effective Nature-based Solutions (NbS) for meeting the EU’s targets on climate change mitigation and adaptation as well as biodiversity support. To this end, the project is embedded within an ambitious stakeholder engagement and communications programme.
During the first 18 months of the wildE project, a primary focus has been on knowledge and data acquisition in four major fields:
(1) The development of concepts and literature syntheses related with rewilding. Activities included the elaboration of a formal quantitative framework for ‘climate-smart rewilding’ as well as several literature reviews and meta-analyses addressing different environmental, socio-economic and political aspects associated with rewilding and alternative land management options.
(2) Empirical analyses of recent European-scale rewilding trends and their implications. Activities included detailed remote sensing studies of land abandonment since 1989 and its ecosystem-level consequences, as well as an EU-wide survey on social perceptions and attitudes towards nature and wilderness.
(3) In-depth analyses of the environmental, social and economic implications of rewilding in the project’s eight case studies. Activities included diverse fine-scale ecological studies as well as the organisation of local stakeholder workshops, focus group discussions and interviews, which informed ongoing detailed studies of the social perceptions, opportunity costs and benefits of rewilding compared to alternative land uses.
(4) Model-based estimates of the potential of rewilding to address EU biodiversity and climate goals. Activities included the development of relevant land use change and climate scenarios and their integration into land use, ecosystem, and economic (opportunity cost) models involving extensive model adjustment, parametrisation, and testing.
These activities have been greatly facilitated by the organisation of >15 meetings and workshops. Much of the described work has been led by the >20 early-stage (PhD or postdoctoral) researchers contracted through the project. Overall, the research work has advanced quite smoothly and mostly fully in line with the original plans and schedules.
(1) The development of concepts and literature syntheses related with rewilding. Activities included the elaboration of a formal quantitative framework for ‘climate-smart rewilding’ as well as several literature reviews and meta-analyses addressing different environmental, socio-economic and political aspects associated with rewilding and alternative land management options.
(2) Empirical analyses of recent European-scale rewilding trends and their implications. Activities included detailed remote sensing studies of land abandonment since 1989 and its ecosystem-level consequences, as well as an EU-wide survey on social perceptions and attitudes towards nature and wilderness.
(3) In-depth analyses of the environmental, social and economic implications of rewilding in the project’s eight case studies. Activities included diverse fine-scale ecological studies as well as the organisation of local stakeholder workshops, focus group discussions and interviews, which informed ongoing detailed studies of the social perceptions, opportunity costs and benefits of rewilding compared to alternative land uses.
(4) Model-based estimates of the potential of rewilding to address EU biodiversity and climate goals. Activities included the development of relevant land use change and climate scenarios and their integration into land use, ecosystem, and economic (opportunity cost) models involving extensive model adjustment, parametrisation, and testing.
These activities have been greatly facilitated by the organisation of >15 meetings and workshops. Much of the described work has been led by the >20 early-stage (PhD or postdoctoral) researchers contracted through the project. Overall, the research work has advanced quite smoothly and mostly fully in line with the original plans and schedules.
The wildE project is still at a relatively early stage and has only generated limited publicly available output, yet the production of research results is advancing fast and proceeds in most cases the original schedules. Some emerging relevant results are:
The ‘climate-smart rewilding’ framework, a cornerstone of the wildE project, is currently being developed in an advanced research manuscript. At least seven other concept papers, literature reviews, and meta-analyses either have already been published or exist as advanced manuscripts. These literature syntheses address a wide range of topics related to rewilding, including: a) effects of boreal forest vegetation structure on biodiversity; b) consequences of rewilding for ecosystem resilience to climate change related disturbances; c) environmental and social implications of recent natural forest expansion in Europe; d) societal perceptions of rewilding and wilderness and their cultural and socio-economic drivers; and e) the consideration of rewilding principles in European policy documents. The concept papers and literature syntheses represent a highly relevant update of the scientific state-of-the-art in rewilding and an important knowledge base upon which subsequent wildE project publications, as well as the scientific community at large, can build.
The Pan-European analyses of yearly land cover changes based on Landsat imagery have generated high-resolution annual maps of fallow/active agricultural lands and fractional woody cover, allowing to infer so far unavailable fine-scale geographical patterns of agricultural abandonment and rewilding since 1989. This information is highly complementary to other Pan-European estimates of land abandonment based on different approaches, and it will allow elucidating of relevant fine-scale environmental drivers of land abandonment. Further analyses of historical vegetation responses to passive rewilding following farmland abandonment over the last two decades have moreover documented a marked increase of woody vegetation cover and height across Europe, pointing to a significant carbon sequestration and storage effect of passive rewilding in the area.
The ‘climate-smart rewilding’ framework, a cornerstone of the wildE project, is currently being developed in an advanced research manuscript. At least seven other concept papers, literature reviews, and meta-analyses either have already been published or exist as advanced manuscripts. These literature syntheses address a wide range of topics related to rewilding, including: a) effects of boreal forest vegetation structure on biodiversity; b) consequences of rewilding for ecosystem resilience to climate change related disturbances; c) environmental and social implications of recent natural forest expansion in Europe; d) societal perceptions of rewilding and wilderness and their cultural and socio-economic drivers; and e) the consideration of rewilding principles in European policy documents. The concept papers and literature syntheses represent a highly relevant update of the scientific state-of-the-art in rewilding and an important knowledge base upon which subsequent wildE project publications, as well as the scientific community at large, can build.
The Pan-European analyses of yearly land cover changes based on Landsat imagery have generated high-resolution annual maps of fallow/active agricultural lands and fractional woody cover, allowing to infer so far unavailable fine-scale geographical patterns of agricultural abandonment and rewilding since 1989. This information is highly complementary to other Pan-European estimates of land abandonment based on different approaches, and it will allow elucidating of relevant fine-scale environmental drivers of land abandonment. Further analyses of historical vegetation responses to passive rewilding following farmland abandonment over the last two decades have moreover documented a marked increase of woody vegetation cover and height across Europe, pointing to a significant carbon sequestration and storage effect of passive rewilding in the area.