CLIMANATRES

We Introduce you Interreg Danube project CLIMANATRES, a collaborative initiative aimed to ensure more efficient adaptation to the negative impacts of climate change on habitat types including EU priority types in the ecological corridor of the middle and lower Danube.

To achieve this goal, we aim at improving and applying existing potential habitat distribution models that reflect climate conditions. The ultimate aim of the project is to contribute to the national Nature Restoration Plans and management of protected areas and ecological corridors. Consequently, we focus on the well-represented and plausible confined lowland and low mountain areas for which we also have long developed and reliable modelling methodology to serve the needs of nature restoration planning. 

However, in a region, where climate is expected to shift that in turn is expected to induce shifts in vegetations, single-country climate change impact assessments are suboptimal. The proposed project is the first, that would allow the coherent assessment of both habitat-environment relationships and climate change impact over a region, where present-future climate analogues can be found.

Our consortium, comprised of diverse stakeholders from 6 countries, including ecological research institutions, univeristities, NGOs, public institutions and ministries, aims to contribute to the national Nature Restoration Plans and management of protected areas and ecological corridors.

EU has announced to strive to be the first climate-neutral continent by 2030  in the Green Deal document. A major pillar of this target is the Biodiversity Strategy 2030 that aims to restore nature in the EU. The target of climate-resilience cannot be decoupled from fighting biodiversity loss, as a major driver of climate change is land use intensification resulting in carbon emissions and biodiversity loss at the same time. Therefore a great challenge for Europe is how to reverse biodiversity loss. The Green Deal together with the Biodiversity Strategy 2030 is a great opportunity to make effective changes in this direction. Climanatres can greatly improve science behind restoration planning possibly related to the NRL but also beyond, as well as other activities to manage protected or high nature value land under climate change. The joint planning of restoration would ensure functionality of the restored ecosystems as part of the green infrastructure, corridors and habitats for organisms with broad-scale habitat use.

With the co-operation of a wide range of academic and, local and national level partners the project aims to produce freely available maps that express the sutiability of locations for various restoration aims, such as habitats of community interest, corridor stepping stones, long-term self-sustainable habitats under climate change.

The chief motivation of the project is to provide scientifically supported decision support and planning tools for harmonising ecological restorations overarching borders along the Sava and Danube corridor. The support is intended to aid the implementation EU Nature Restoration Law and further harmonised ecological planning (Green Deal) taking expected climate change patterns, too.