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OriginsFUTURALP was a multidisciplinary research program and multinational dealing with the consequences of possible climate change on alpine ecosystems. ICALPE has coordinated the program of EPOCH Commission European Communities, under the responsibility of the Directorate General Research , Environment Division. FUTURALP the program was also part of an ongoing collaboration between ICALPE and the World Alliance for Nature (IUCN): This report has been in effect a continuation of a seminar held jointly before the program began FUTURALP, and it was a contribution to the Global Change Program of IUCN.
Objectives
In a first phase, FUTURALP intended to focus on the consequences of climate change on ecological zoning and the identification of indicator species. The objective was to develop scenarios across the Alps along with simulations map. Working approachStarting from a priori assumptions provided by the available global circulation models, development of climate scenarios best suited to the Alps was an important task entrusted to the Swiss National Climate Program PROCLIMA. Based on these scenarios, the likely changes in ecological zonation were studied jointly by the Universities of Grenoble (France) and Camerino (Italy). The search for indicator species was primarily on birds, with a collaboration between the National Park Berchtesgaden (Germany), the National Park of Gran Paradiso (Italy) and the University of Chambéry (France), while a investigation similar to the vegetation was conducted by the Botanical Conservatory of Geneva (Switzerland) in association with ProClim.
All the work has led to an overall view across the Alps, but the assumptions and scenarios result also work on more ad hoc test zones, representing the diversity alpine. These were mainly national parks where field data were marketable and interesting with which extensions of the program were considered, notably in developing methods for monitoring the evolution of media.
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