Highlights of the presentations and summary of the discussions of the workshop "What is Landscape Ecology up to in the Climate Change Debate"  (US-IALE meeting 2009, Snowbird, UT, Tuesday, April 14, 2009)

Felix Kienast (Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL), Bruce Jones (USGS, Restion, VA USA) and ca. 30 participants (in an open discussion on Tuesday, April 14, US-IALE meeting Snowbird UT)

Motivation and set-up
It was recently claimed by Paul Opdam (www.landscape-ecology.org/climate_change.html) that "the climate change debate has received little attention from landscape ecologists. The 2007 IALE World Congress in Wageningen brought together two symposia on climate change: one on the effects of climate change on wetland systems, and one on effects on species in fragmented ecosystems, which included a few papers on adaptation strategies. To date, only four papers with climate change in the title have been published in the journal Landscape Ecology (1991, 1993, 2004, 2007), and only two in Landscape and Urban Planning (2007, 2008), suggesting that the recent rise in attention has not been reflected in landscape ecology research." This statement was the starting point of the workshop. Attendees were asked to express their views on the subject and comment on the following 4 statements:

• Why is there so little attention given to adaptation of landscapes to climate change in the landscape ecology community?
• How can landscape ecology facilitate adaption of landscapes to climate change?
• What are the key research questions and challenges?
• Their involvement in research on adaptation of landscapes to climate change. 
• Tools or approaches that they have developed or know of that wouldhelp landscape planners and stakeholders understand or address climate change issues.

Highlights of the morning session
Five well-known landscape ecologists presented their views of research highlights and the role of Landscape Ecology in the climate change debate:

• John Wiens: Managing Landscapes in a Rapidly Changing World: How? For What?
• Niklaus Zimmermann: Changing Climates and the Response of Forest Landscapes in the European Alps
• Louis Iverson: Combining Tools in the Landscape Ecology Toolbox to Model Potential Impacts of Climate Change
• Thomas Edwards: Modelling species across landscapes under changing climates: more questions than answers
• Virginia Dale: Landscape ecology under climate change and changing ways to meet energy needs: the climate change - land use - energy nexus.

The session included a broad range of themes and included  the following highlights:

• Climate and land-use change are interconnected and models and forecasts must account for the interwoven nature of both
• Land-use change may be more important than climate change in the near term, but in the long term climate change may have multiplicative effects.
• New community assemblages may occur due to individualistic responses to climate ... this will present a challenge
• It is important to understand the scales of and interactions among drivers
  Landscape ecology can provide tools for adaption and a framework upon which to evaluate landscape design alternatives along environmental gradients (beyond traditional environmental conservation approaches)
• Landscape ecology can inform the what and where ... because of its focus on pattern and process.  Prioritization of spatial explicit options for management.
• Landscape ecology, which often focuses on connectivity, can help build more dynamic habitat models and potential responses of species to combinations of land use and climate change ... e.g., disperal models
• In an era of scarce and transitioning resources, landscape ecology offers significant potential for alternative designs with net overall benefits to ecosystem services Landscape ecology does a good job incorporating people and societies into solutions for sustaining for environmental quality ... like ecosystem services, often a positive spin
• Landscape ecology can potentially provide indicators that capture more complex landscape interactions and processes ... a solution to assess multiple ecosystem services

What are the big research questions-Discussing future topics in the afternoon session
The afternoon session was attended by approximately 30 people, who commented on the above mentioned questions and highlights. The following topics were added by the participants:

• Adaptive management: Derive adaptive management schemes with predictive models. Help managers put their observations into a larger framework
• What is our audience? Management community. Define the flow of data from experiment or observation to the manager.
• Up-scaling, down-scaling: these tools are not yet ready, especially when it comes to landscape or region-specific warming scenarios. What is the appropriate scale?  Are there appropriate scale domains to study landscape processes.  Do we have the right monitoring sites to downscale?  There is also a need for theoretical assessments.
• Assisted migration by designing corridors. Multi-species and community (biome) analyses are needed.   A thorough understanding of dispersal and movement through landscapes (bottlenecks) is needed.
• Landscape design: Refugias and designing landscapes with gradients is an important concept. 
• Design climate mitigating policies: Policy instruments for mitigating or adapting to climate change at the farm and other scales are needed.  There is a need to determine optimal connectivity (not too much or  too little), and the degree to which the solution varies given specific species or communities.  Small-scale compensation and agricultural practices are needed to adapt to climate changes
• Contribution of land-use types or processes (fire, harvest) to the CO2 balance? The importance of spatially explicit land-uses and how they mightbenefit or contribute to CO2
• Landscape indicators: Landscape ecology should contribute to  indicator-driven assessments.
• Landscape disturbances: What are the landscape processes influencing disturbance? Study large scale disturbances using the principle of “space for time”  in the absence of knowing the processes
• What is the right scale? Quantify scale specific responses to climate change
• Experimental analysis and landscape design: Validation exercises and innovative experimental approaches to evaluate models
• Foster linkages between landscape functions and economic and cultural models to better understand the influences of  societies on landscape land-uses, but especially those land-uses that would facilitate adaptation to climate change.
• Economic assessments: Landscape Ecology has the tools to valuate landscape services from an economic perspective
• Knowledge transfer: Landscape Ecology should develop communication tools to facilitate communication among stakeholders (for example, experimental decision centers that utilize spatial optimization tools).  These centers shouldevaluate the needs of resource managers regularily,and provide information and best practices that can be easily understood by decision makers.
• Communication: A watershed is a unit that people understand.  Landscape Ecology should find a common communication entity (cataloguing unit) that stake holders can perceive and understand.  A goal should be to accumulate  indigeneous knowledge and to use cataloguing units that that make sense to stake holders
• Develop landscape ecology theories and be more direct in solving land management and policy issues("if WE don't do it others will)
• Develop optimization tools that facilitate identification of landscape designs that provide the greatest probability of ecosystem service provision under a changing climate.
• Use Landscape Ecology to evaluate climate change impacts to coastal zones, especially those resulting from a combination of land- and ocean-based (e.g.,  sea level rise) process changes.
• Use Landscape Ecology theory to develop a characterization of landscape resilience.
• Use Landscape Ecology pattern and process principles to understand how climate change might affect the spread of disease.
• Develop a common currency to view and evaluate landscapes (energy, landscape indicators)
• Market Landscape Ecology ideas in developing countries.
• Develop the profession of a landscape mediator (extension agent)