Hydro-meteorological risk and socio-economic development: future land cover scenarios of an alpine valley

Autor(en)

Ziga Malek, Dagmar Schröter, Thomas Glade, Luc Boerboom

Abstrakt

European mountain areas have been experiencing significant socio-economic transformation with a
vital decrease in population and agricultural activities, and improved accessibility and development
of recreational areas. This presents a major break to long-term landscape evolution and has
important consequences on the provision of important ecosystem services, providing valuable
resources in these areas and making them safe and habitable. One of the areas experiencing
particularly intense socio-economic changes in the last, and most likely also in the coming decades
is the Mountain community of Gemona, Canal del Ferro and Val Canale in the Eastern Italian Alps.
Owing to its border position and infrastructure network, the area was an important trade and
customs center with important industry. The economy of the area however changed substantially
after global socio-economic changes: expansion of the European Union and the introduction of the
Schengen regime. Following a collapse of industrial and trade activities, tourism came to focus,
which also defines future development goals of the area. Compared to other regions in the Italian
Alps and in the neighborhood, tourism here is still at a relative early stage and small scale, however
current development suggests significant expansion. The area has so on one side witnessed one of
the highest depopulation and population aging rates in the Alps in the last 30 years, and large scale
infrastructural projects such as the highway high speed railroad and a major pipeline on the other.
All this made the area closer to the neighboring regions and bigger cities in the vicinity, resulting in
accelerated real estate development. This intense increase of assets has however resulted in
catastrophic consequences to hydro-meteorological events, among them flash floods and debris
flows. In order to understand the consequences of different development pathways, we will generate
future scenarios of land use, by incorporating remote sensing, GIS and spatially explicit land use
modeling with qualitative research, and evaluating these scenarios in the context of hydrometeorological
risk. Modeling at a detailed local level enables simulating local scale interactions
and decisions – among them risk regulations – and taking into account local limitations like
topography and accessibility. This way, we will be able to investigate, how different spatial
regulations (or lack of them) could shape the land use pattern in this area. Moreover, it will allow us
to explore how global driving forces and resulting local land use changes open new challenges for
mountain communities.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Geographie und Regionalforschung

Externe Organisation(en)

Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, University of Twente

Publikationsdatum

2014

ÖFOS 2012

507015 Regionalforschung

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 8 – Menschenwürdige Arbeit und Wirtschaftswachstum, SDG 10 – Weniger Ungleichheiten, SDG 15 – Leben an Land

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/0bdc1598-2056-41c6-9a27-0e1dc579a667