Climate change impact assessment
We prepare climate change impact assessment studies on various areas to assist in strategic decision making.
About the project
Methodological improvement of forest species distribution models for mitigating the effects of climate change or MEMECLIM, is a study funded by the call for research projects for non-profit foundations granted by the Ministry for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge during the year 2022.
Objectives
MEMECLIM has the following objectives:
- Generate local-scale future climate scenarios based on the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report models.
- Study, define and obtain present and future Bioclimatic Indexes.
- Delimit genetically and ecologically sound source regions for the study species.
- To obtain a data bank of present and future climatic niches of the main forest species in the Spanish peninsular territory through DEMs based on machine learning techniques and calculated environmental envelopes.
- Analysis of the results obtained from the different DEM calculation techniques.
- To know the expected geographic distribution of these species, based on the projection of the most robust DEMs to future scenarios.
- To obtain a data bank of present and future climatic niches of the main forest species in the Spanish peninsular territory through the predictive algorithms obtained in FORESCLIM.
- To provide free and open access to all data generated so that they can be used by any organization or interested agent that wishes to use them.
- Disseminate project results, including the need for “adaptation for mitigation” and emphasizing social networking resources (e.g. through the use of “meme propagation theory”).
Results
Among its main results, the following stand out:
- Daily series of maximum and minimum temperature and precipitation observations have been obtained for the entire peninsular national territory, and exhaustive quality controls have been applied.
- Local scenarios of future climate have been generated for each of the 10 climate models and each of the 4 selected SSPs, for each of the observatories in the territory. These scenarios consist of daily series of maximum and minimum temperatures and precipitation, both for the historical period (1951-2014) and for the rest of the 21st century (2015-2100).
- Rigorous downscaling methodology verification and model validation processes have also been carried out for each observatory. These verification results have been very satisfactory, and the validation results have been sufficiently satisfactory.
Funded by
Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge through grants to third-sector entities or non-governmental organizations that carry out activities of general interest considered to be of social interest in the field of scientific and technical research and environmental protection under state jurisdiction. This research has been funded by the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge but does not express its opinion.
