Vaccia

Vulnerability Assessment of ecosystem services for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation (VACCIA) - Action 6: Assessment of climate change and land use impacts in urban environments

The vulnerability of ecosystem services provided by Finland’s natural resources, and the possibilities for adaptation by human society, are the subject of investigation in the VACCIA project of the European Union Life+ programme, to be realized during the period 2009–2011. Contributors to this extensive project include the Finnish Environment Institute, the Finnish Meteorological Institute and the universities of Helsinki, Jyväskylä and Oulu.
The aims are:

• to gather information about how global warming is changing ecosystem services 
• to identify means by which society can adapt to changing conditions 
• to estimate how climate change will affect the transport of airborne pollutants to northern latitudes
• to convey the information obtained to decision makers and the general public 
• to support local and regional scale planning and decision making

There are 13 different Actions in VACCIA and our group is working in the Action 6: Assessment of climate change and land use impacts in urban environments. This Action links together two different approaches to global change: land use and climate change. It develops ways for measuring and assessing climate change by collecting information on land use in urban environments, thereby producing further developed and better applicable policy-making and planning tools for governance at different levels aiming at adaptation and mitigation of climate change.

>> Read more on the whole VACCIA project

>> Read more on the VACCIA Action 6