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Working groups

Working Groups at the 2nd ALTER-Net Summer School, Peyresq 1 - 13 September 2007


Here is a photo gallery of the working groups.

Chief Tutor: Dagmar Schröter
Dagmar.Schroeter -at- gmail.com
Umweltbundesamt, Spittelauer Lände 5, 1090 Vienna, Austria and Research Fellow at Clark University, Worcester, USA
Personal homepage

Bill Bealey
bib -at- ceh.ac.uk
Atmospheric Sciences Section, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Bush Estate, Midlothian EH26 0QB, UK

Uta Fritsch
uta.fritsch -at- gmx.de
Via Claudia de Medici 19, 39100 Bolzano, Italy

Alexander Popp
alexander.popp -at- pik-potsdam.de
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Telegrafenberg, 14473 Potsdam, Germany
Photographs by Wolfgang Cramer and Sabine Lütkemeier



This year the working groups concentrated on the research project "VASA" which is a cooperation programme in the Seventh Framework Programme of the EU. The ultimate objective of the VASA project is to reduce regional vulnerability in the Alps by developing sustainable adaptation strategies for the sectors water, agriculture, nature conservation and tourism, taking into account interactions between these sectors and the drivers that influence them (Annex I). Based on scenarios from the MA and IPCC merged in a handout the groups worked on the local region around Peyresq that is the Var catchment.

Reducing Regional Vulnerability in the Alps - Developing Sustainable Adaptation Strategies and Managing Biodiversity in a Climate of Change (VASA)

Two delegates from each group formed the Synthesis Group which summarised the results for policy makers.


On the last day of the summer school all five working groups presented their results:

- Synthesis group (pdf: 1MB)

- Water (pdf: 600KB)

- Nature Conservation (pdf: 1MB)

- Agriculture (pdf: 2MB)

- Tourism (pdf: 4MB)


After the summer school the sectoral reports where revised and submitted via the tutors to the summer school secretariat where all subreports were united in a final report. Here you can download the final report (pdf: 8MB) of the working groups.
Photographs by Steffi Heinrichs and Sabine Lütkemeier


Recommended background literature for the working groups:


Essential reading on vulnerability — an introductory review
Essential reading on vulnerability — methodology
  • Metzger MJ, Schröter D (2006) Towards a spatially explicit and quantitative vulnerability assessment of environmental change in Europe. Regional Environmental Change 6(4):201-216.doi:10.1007/s10113-006-0020-2.
  • Schröter D, Polsky C, Patt AG (2005) Assessing vulnerabilities to the effects of global change: an eight step approach. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 10(4):573-595. doi:10.1007/s11027-005-6135-9
  • Metzger M, Leemans R, Schröter D (2005) A multidisciplinary multi-scale framework for assessing vulnerability to global change. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 7:253-267. doi:10.1016/j.jag.2005.06.011

Essential reading on adaptation and adaptive capacity
  • Grothmann T, Patt A (2005) Adaptive capacity and human cognition: The process of individual adaptation to climate change. Global Environmental Change 15:199-213. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2005.01.002
  • Patt A, Suarez P, Gwata C (2005) Effects of seasonal climate forecasts and participatory workshops among subsistence farmers in Zimbabwe. Proceedings National Academy of Sciences USA 102:12673-12678. doi:10.1073/pnas.0506125102

Interesting reading — in depth case studies (on different regions or issues)

...on Southern Africa:
  • Atlas for Disaster Preparedness and Response in the Limpopo Basin. 2003, Instituto Nacional De Gestao De Calamidades Mocambique (INGC), Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (UEM) - Department of Geography, Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET), Mozambique Integrated Information Network for Decision-Making (MIND), 99 p. http://www.setsan.org.mz/limpopoatlas
...on Germany: ...on Europe:
  • Schröter D, Cramer W, Leemans R, Prentice IC, Araújo MB, Arnell NW, Bondeau A, Bugmann H, Carter TR, Garcia CA, de la Vega-Leinert AC, Erhard M, Ewert F, Glendining M, House JI, Kankaanpää S, Klein RJT, Lavorel S, Lindner M, Metzger MJ, Meyer J, Mitchell TD, Reginster I, Rounsevell M, Sabaté S, Sitch S, Smith B, Smith J, Smith P, Sykes MT, Thonicke K, Thuiller W, Tuck G, Zaehle S, Zierl B (2005) Ecosystem service supply and vulnerability to global change in Europe. Science 310:1333-1337, doi:10.1126/science.1115233
  • Metzger MJ, Leemans R, Schröter D, Cramer W and the ATEAM consortium (2004) The ATEAM vulnerability mapping tool. Quantitative approaches in systems analysis No. 27, CD-ROM publication, Office C.T. de Wit Graduate School for Production Ecology & Resource Conservation (PE&RC), Wageningen, The Netherlands. http://www.pik-potsdam.de/ateam/
  • Metzger MJ, Rounsevell MDA, Acosta-Michlik L, Leemans R, Schröter D (2006) The vulnerability of ecosystem services to land use change. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 114:64-85. doi:10.1016/j.agee.2005.11.025
...on historical cases:
  • Fraser EDG (2003) Social vulnerability and ecological fragility: Building bridges between social and natural sciences using the Irish Potato Famine as a case study. Conservation Ecology 7(2):9. http://www.consecol.org/vol7/iss2/art9/
  • Schröter D (2005) Vulnerability to changes in ecosystem services. CID Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Fellow Working Paper No. 10, Center for International Development (CID), Harvard University, Cambridge, USA, pp 22. (pdf: 200KB)
...on biodiversity
  • Brooks TM, Mittermeier RA, da Fonseca GAB, Gerlach J, Hoffmann M, Lamoreux JF, Mittermeier CG, Pilgrim JD, Rodrigues ASL (2006) Global biodiversity conservation priorities. Science 313:58-61, doi:10.1126/science.1127609

Some reading on adaptation to climate change
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