From October 5th to October 7th some of us had the chance to attend the BLIZ conference, which was hosted by our network bayklif and the Bavarian State Ministry for Science and Art. It ran that theme ‘How to predict future land use and biodiversity change under climatic change at the regional level‘. Due to the current COVID-19 situation the conference took place digitally.
The workshop topic our group was involved in was of special interest for us and our research: What does it mean to improve the integration of land use data and land use models into models which investigate the impact of climate change on biodiversity? Scientists like Alma Mendoza-Ponze or Peter H. Verburg were presenting their findings and therewith informed ours.
One of the greatest aspects about the BLIZ conference is its efficiency factor: The outcome of the workshops does not remain in the sometimes slightly isolated scientific landscape. They are rather incorporated into the work of the interdisciplinary BLIZ project, which flows into action plans for policymakers and published research. Integrating land use data into climate change & biodiversity models opens the door to the elaboration of new approaches to land use which do consider climate change and biodiversity. This is actually quite exciting, because their successful application is a complex undertaking: Stakeholders, as e.g. residents, have to accept the decisions, ecological issues will be of consequence, and socio-economical questions have to be answered. Thus we were very happy to have the chance of learning and contributing in a project event which is so notedly close to our research and social goals.
