Climate changes will have major consequences for agriculture as well as nature in the Netherlands. It is necessary to make modifications to the ground water level, water storage facilities, and the structure of rural development areas. Wageningen UR has conducted studies for three regions to determine the risks of climate change and the effectiveness of adaptation strategies. The studies also examine which strategies lend themselves best to an integrated or sectoral approach.
Longer periods of drought, heavier rainfall, larger peak discharges of rivers, and a rising sea level are merely a few examples of the consequences that climate change will have in the coming decades. Nature and agriculture in the Netherlands will be facing problems such as salinisation, waterlogging, flooding, drought, diseases and plagues.
Over the past few years, researchers from Alterra and PRI have carried out an analysis of spatial bottlenecks for nature and agriculture as a result of climate change. The effects have been organised and presented in a bottleneck chart . Strategies were then designed to allow the adaptation of agriculture and nature to the changing circumstances, what are known as the adaptation strategies .
Exposure to weather extremes
In studying the consequences of climate change for agriculture, the researchers focused on the increasing exposure of common agricultural crops to salinisation, waterlogging, drought, disease and plagues, in addition to weather extremes such as late frost and intense and lengthy downpours. For nature, they examined the effects of increasing exposure to drought and heat stress, coastal erosion, salinisation and waterlogging/flooding. In addition, existing bottlenecks in the spatial coherence and the percentage of cold-loving target species per nature type were also considered.
Sensitive nature types
With regard to agriculture, it is mainly the western marshland area, Flevoland, East Groningen and Zeeland which emerge as being sensitive to several bottlenecks. With respect to nature, the extremely sensitive nature types are mainly the wet heathlands and moor areas (at the higher elevation sand soil areas and in the marshlands and sea clay areas) and stagnant bodies of freshwater with sea clay bottoms (for example in the provinces of Noord/Zuid Holland and Flevoland).
In order to be able to come to well-founded policy recommendations, a follow-up study zoomed in on three regions which differ vastly from one another: the headland of the Noord-Holland peninsula (salinisation and flooding), Southwest Friesland/Northwest Overijssel (flooding and drought) and Eastern Noord-Brabant (drought). This study examined the likelihood of bottlenecks forming and the amount of surface area that would be involved. Based on the actual bottlenecks, adaptation strategies were formulated for each area and tested for their effectiveness and the degree to which an integrated approach would be necessary or desirable.
Adaptation strategies
In the follow-up study “Integration of adaptation strategies for agriculture and nature“, ten adaptation strategies have been selected, elaborated on further, and the application and feasibility of these strategies in other areas of the Netherlands have been studied in greater detail. The effectiveness of each strategy is related to the parcel size and the scale level the approach focuses on. The degree to which the involvement of farmers and other stakeholders may be realised also plays a role, as do the economic prospects and the extent to which technical innovations are available.
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