Climate Change Impacts On Swiss Mountain Ecosystem Services: A Land Use Change Perspective.
Sep 2025
| event | Conference presentation |
| location | Innsbruck, Austria |
2026
Identifying robust area-based conservation strategies to secure ecosystem service provision under uncertainties
Journal of Environmental Management
Overview
<p>Protected areas are the primary strategy for preserving biodiversity
globally, with countries committed to protecting 30% of land by 2030 under the
Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. However, conservation planning
typically relies on current data about where species live and which areas
provide important ecosystem services, without adequately considering two
critical uncertainties: how climate change and land use will shift these
patterns in the future, and what society values most in terms of conservation
goals. This study demonstrates a comprehensive approach to testing different
conservation strategies under uncertain future conditions, using Switzerland as
a case study to identify which approaches will be most effective regardless of
how the future unfolds.</p>
Key findings
<ul>
<li>Areas currently prioritized for protection based on their ecological value showed little overlap with regions that will be most robust for ecosystem services in the future, highlighting the danger of ignoring future changes in conservation planning.</li>
<li>The most consistently effective strategy across all scenarios involved rapidly expanding protected areas to 30% coverage, beginning as soon as possible, and prioritizing many small patches rather than a few large ones.</li>
<li>Combining both preservation (protecting existing natural areas) and restoration (converting degraded land back to natural states) proved more robust than relying on either approach alone.</li>
<li>High-elevation regions in the Swiss Alps showed the most stable and increasing ecosystem service provision under future scenarios, while lower-elevation areas face more variable outcomes depending on urbanization and agricultural pressures.</li>
<li>Different ecosystem services responded differently to conservation strategies, meaning optimal approaches must account for societal preferences about which services to prioritize.</li>
</ul>
Methods
<p>This research integrated spatial conservation planning software with
scenario-based simulation modeling to test 216 different conservation strategies
under five scenarios representing different climate futures, land use changes,
and conservation priorities. The scenarios were developed through a
participatory process and ranged from prioritizing biodiversity hotspots to
focusing on culturally significant landscapes or areas providing high ecosystem
services.</p>
<p>For each combination of strategy and scenario (1,080 simulations total), the
team modeled land use changes and mapped 10 ecosystem services across
Switzerland from 2020 to 2060 at high spatial resolution. These services
included habitat quality, carbon storage, water regulation, pollination,
agricultural productivity, recreation potential, and habitat for emblematic
species. The simulations tested variations in when to establish protected areas,
how quickly to expand them, what total coverage to achieve, whether to
prioritize large or small patches, and whether to focus on preservation or
restoration.</p>
<p>Statistical modeling and clustering techniques identified which strategies
consistently led to optimal ecosystem service outcomes across the different
future scenarios, revealing approaches that are robust to uncertainty rather
than optimized for a single predicted future.</p>
Implications
<ul>
<li>Conservation planning must shift from using static snapshots of current conditions to "stress-testing" proposed plans against multiple plausible future scenarios of climate and land use change.</li>
<li>For Switzerland specifically, achieving the 30% protection target will require immediate action, as delaying establishment of new protected areas significantly reduces their effectiveness in maintaining ecosystem services.</li>
<li>The finding that small patches distributed across human-dominated landscapes performed better than large consolidated areas suggests conservation should focus on protecting numerous smaller sites, particularly in lowland agricultural and urban regions.</li>
<li>The methodology demonstrated here can be applied by other countries pursuing the global 30x30 target, providing a framework for identifying conservation strategies that remain effective despite uncertainty about future conditions.</li>
<li>Conservation plans should directly incorporate ecosystem services alongside biodiversity data, as prioritizing areas based on current service provision proved more effective than focusing solely on species distributions.</li>
<li>Successful conservation will require adaptive management that combines multiple approaches—preservation and restoration, large reserves and small patches—tailored to different regional contexts rather than applying a one-size-fits-all strategy.</li>
</ul>
