文摘
An ecological risk assessment is described for determining the adaptation potential of the approximately 11 000 Swiss Forest Inventory points (FIP) to a hypothetically changing climate. The core of the study is a spatially explicit forest community model that generates estimates of the potential natural vegetation for the entire potential forest area of Switzerland under today's as well as under altered climate regimes. The model is based on the Bayes formula. The probabilities of the communities occurring along ecological gradients are derived from empirical data featuring the relationships between quasi-natural vegetation types and measured site variables. Bioclimatological input variables are the quotient between July temperature and annual precipitation (model version A) or mean annual temperature (model version B). Other site variables include aspect, acidity of top soil and, to account for continentality, geographical region. Climate change scenarios are defined as follows: Moderate climate change implies an increase of the mean annual temperature of 1°C to 1.4°C depending on the region (model version B) or an increase of the July temperature of 1.5°C (model version A). Strong climate change implies an increase of the mean annual temperature of 2°C to 2.8°C (model version B) or an increase of the July temperature of 3.0°C (model version A).