ForeCeA – Riparian forests in arid regions of Central Asia under pressure by use and limited water resources: definition of tipping points to ensure sustainable management

Sponsored by BMBF

Project summary
In the arid regions of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan riparian forests are severely threatened by intensive human use of land and water resources. Continuing anthropogenic pressure will lead to further degradation of riparian forests and eventually shift their ecosystem functions and services towards a tipping point, i.e. irreversible changes of the ecosystem. For instance, the lowering of the water table affects the rejuvenation of the stands from seeds and, eventually, the vegetative regeneration from root suckers. This will lead to a decrease in the stands' capability to acclimatize, resist stress and adapt to environmental changes. However, basic knowledge about tipping points is lacking. Ecological tipping points of riparian forests and related socio-economic tipping points of society need to be identified and quantified in order to have thorough knowledge to develop sustainable management schemes for riparian forests. Identifying and quantifying such tipping points can be best done with a transdisciplinary and participatory research approach by integrating a broad group of researchers from different disciplines from natural and social sciences and non-academic actors from local and regional administration, non-governmental and development organizations.

Our contribution
Our main goal is to generate comprehensive knowledge on ecological and related socio-economic tipping points. We will do this by integrating the knowledge of ecological and related socio-economic tipping points generated in the project from different academic disciplines from the natural and social sciences (interdisciplinary knowledge integration) and practical knowledge from a broad group of non-academic actors on the national and regional scale and traditional knowledge from communities on the local scale (transdisciplinary knowledge integration). First, we will use the characterize ecosystem services for quantifying socio-economic tipping points together with scientists and stakeholders. Then, for inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge integration we will further develop, combine and use appropriate participatory modelling methods such as causal networks (e.g. perception graphs), exploratory scenarios and Bayesian networks to the regional context in Central Asia. The result will in order to quantify under which conditions ecological and socio-economic tipping points might occur. The result will be an inter- and transdisciplinary generation and integration of different types of knowledge over different spatial scales, showing the conditions for reaching ecological and related socio-economic tipping points in riparian forests in the three Central Asian countries and also revealing the most effective measures to prevent tipping points.

Contact
Dr. Laura Woltersdorf
Prof. Dr. Petra Döll (principal investigator)

Duration
June 2017 – Mai 2018 (Phase I)

Funding
German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)

Publications
Forthcoming

Posters
Forthcoming

Presentations
Forthcoming

Further information / social media
Forthcoming