MEDALUS III: REGIONAL INDICATORS PROJECT
Co-ordinator: Prof. M. J. Kirkby, University of Leeds
Major project objectives
The overall goal of the Regional Indicators Project was to develop a set of regional indicators to provide a planning tool for application to desertification at regional, national and European scales. Detailed fieldwork and catchment scale models (in the Core Project) provided a scientific basis for understanding soil degradation and other aspects of desertification. In the Target Areas Project, catchment scale field studies provided a survey and typology for environmentally sensitive areas (ESAs) and detailed GIS databases for a number of target areas. In this Regional Indicators Project, these target areas were used to identify ESAs through regional indicators, and develop a broad scale methodology, relying principally on remote sensing, but also making use of other regional data as and where available, to identify and prioritise degradation risks on a pan-European scale. The overall goal of the Regional Indicators Project was, therefore, to develop a set of regional indicators which provide a planning tool for application to desertification at regional, national and European scales. This was achieved through a set of four closely linked programmes.
Module 8: Regional physical indicators of desertification
The development of a physically based model to be applied at the appropriate regional scale, drawing on links with an analysis of remotely sensed data, with validation for the target areas, and on experience gained in MEDALUS II, and from other components of MEDALUS III. Research on remote sensing images provided data on regional-scale changes in vegetation and land use to provide a relevant time series for model calibration. Calibration and validation were also supported by special studies and regional comparisons with the desertification response unit (DRU) classification developed in MEDALUS I and II.
Module 9: Regional economic and social approaches to desertification
One topic in this module aimed to develop tools for forecasting socio-economic change effects on land use and land degradation. Another aimed to study the effects of watershed restoration actions. The last aimed to examine demographic trends, socio-economic drivers of land abandonment, agricultural production and price-forming processes. Integrating socio-economics was difficult as there was little available data at a resolution that could be easily linked with that which could be produced by physical models developed in other MEDALUS projects. There was little overlap between the three topics, however they all focused on different aspects of socio-economics related to land degradation. Much of the work done involved the development and application of a neural network and fuzzy logic based modelling system.
Module 10: Mediterranean scenario development for local climate change
Both Modules 10 and 11 provided a basis for developing detailed climatic scenarios on a European-wide basis. In Module 10 this was achieved mainly through analysis of existing meteorological data sets, with a particular focus on extreme events.
Module 11: Statistical downscaling of model data for impact studies
Module 11 was more directly concerned with downscaling from GCM output to localised distributions for the Mediterranean region as a whole, particularly for hourly and daily rainfall and for daily temperature. They provided the climatic basis for applying the models developed in Modules 8 and 9 as decision support tools.
Together, the components of the Regional Indicators Project were designed to provide a significant planning tool, with the capacity to assess probable directions of change, the scenarios on which such forecasts are made, and the uncertainties surrounding them.
All MEDALUS reports
from this and other modules are listed in the document and data
archive. Reports relating to this module will be found in the
MEDALUS III: Regional Indicators Project volumes. Some of the
more recent reports can be downloaded from this site.
Older reports are obtainable from the MEDALUS Project Office,
free of charge.
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