Adaptive measures for mountain Mediterranean forest ecosystem services under climate and land cover change in the Mont-Ventoux natural Regional Park, France

Abstract : Climate change (CC) and land use and land cover change (LULCC) threaten Mediterranean forests and the ecosystem services (ES) they provide. In complex socio-ecological systems and under high uncertainties, the resilience of ES has become the target objective for adaptive management strategies driven by decision-makers and local stakeholders. This work develops an integrative and territorial approach to combining biophysical modeling and local managers’ assessments to elaborate scenarios of LULCC in response to climate and socioeconomic changes. It also evaluates the impacts of forest ecosystem changes on coupled ES for different time horizons for a case study of the mountain Mediterranean forests of Mont-Ventoux Natural Regional Park. The results demonstrate first that the future ES provisions predicted by biophysical modeling in this area are less affected by CC than expected by local managers. Furthermore, LULCC increases the changes in ES provision and accentuates the difference between climate scenarios. These results originate from a combination of two effects: (1) pessimistic predictions by local managers and, as a consequence, and (2) anticipatory actions that tend to reinforce or even accelerate the expected changes in the mountain Mediterranean forest area.