ABSTRACT
Improving understanding to ensure sustainable management of landscapes and land use change under the specter of climate change is an important challenge. This chapter demonstrates the application of landscape ecological methods to understand the key issues that climate change presents to regions and landscapes, using European case studies. Before considering how data from global climate change scenarios and models can be used at regional and landscape scales, it presents case studies about the impacts of climate change causing aridification and drought, wind erosion hazards, and land use sensitivity. For example, the utility of regional downscaling of climate change scenarios is demonstrated through a sensitivity assessment of five landscape hazards: soil erosion caused by water; soil erosion caused by wind; drought; mass movement; and flash floods. The chapter concludes by considering how climate change may influence related landscape risks and hazards and how these problems are identified by landscape ecological methods.
