Natura 2000 and Climate Chance - a Challenge

Climate change will have strong effects on biological diversity worldwide. Shifts in the phenological behaviour and the patterns of occurrences of many species have already been observed on all continents. Climate change and the induced changes in land use will cause remarkable changes in abundance of and threats to many species including extinction or immigration of invasive species. Furthermore interspecific interactions like predation, competition, parasitism or pollination will be reshaped, intensified, diminished or dispersed. Thus, nature conservation will be confronted with new challenges. The European network of protected sites Natura 2000 is the most important instrument to maintain biological diversity within the European Union. Because of the high rate of change in climatic conditions and the predicted wide range of changes in species distribution and composition it has to be discussed to what extent Natura 2000 might fulfil its function to maintain the biological diversity also in future and which measures should be taken to enhance the resilience of the protected areas network. This volume presents the proceedings of the international workshop “Natura 2000 and Climate Change - a hallenge“, which was held in May 2010 at the International Academy for Nature Conservation of the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation. The presentations of the workshop varied from already observed and modelled potential effects of climate change on species and habitat types to necessary measures to reduce negative influences of climate change and induced changes in land use on the functions of the Natura 2000 network of protected sites.