Importance of wilderness areas for climate protection and climate adaptation

mdbildes_stock.adobe.com_182530844

According to current estimates by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, wilderness areas make up around 0.6 % of Germany's land area. They are predominantly located in national parks. However, this amount of land is far from the political targets for wilderness areas: 
According to the national biodiversity strategy, wilderness areas in Germany should occupy 2 % of Germany's land area by 2020. The political targets for forest areas with natural development (NWE) have not yet been met either.

The designation of a wilderness area places an area under particularly strict protection with the aim of allowing the ecosystem to develop dynamically. The resulting ecosystems provide habitats for otherwise displaced species and provide numerous ecosystem services. One of these services is carbon storage through the growth of biomass in the wilderness areas. As a result, carbon is initially stored in the vegetation and later in the soil.

Wilderness areas are made up of numerous ecosystems, each of which removes carbon from the atmosphere in different ways. For example, while carbon is primarily sequestered by mountain forests in the high mountain ecosystem, peat moss plays an essential role in carbon storage in the peatland ecosystem. According to this, the amount of carbon stored also varies between ecosystems. But naturally developing ecosystems are not only effective carbon stores. They also make a significant contribution to biodiversity conservation and climate adaptation.

The role of ifeu in this project is to collate the ecosystems relevant to wildlife and quantify their contribution to climate protection as part of a literature study. In addition, synergies with climate adaptation and biodiversity conservation will be identified. Particular attention will be paid to assessing the contribution of current wilderness areas to climate protection and the contribution if the political targets for wilderness areas are achieved. In addition, scenarios are used to model the climate impact that can be achieved by 2030. The business-as-usual scenario (status quo of wilderness areas), the extensification of forest management scenario and the achievement of wilderness targets scenario will be analysed. These results are to lead to a study and form the basis for an argumentation aid to illustrate the climate impact of wilderness areas.