Biodiversity Requires Adaption in Northwest Europe under a CHanging climate (BRANCH)

BRANCH advocated the need for change in spatial planning and land use systems to allow wildlife to adapt to climate change Partners demonstrated the need for change based on an evidence base and developed recommendations and tools in collaboration with planners.

To support policy and planning decisions that will help wildlife to adapt to climate change, BRANCH developed a ‘Decision testing framework’. This can be used to assess the adaptation measures or actions that are needed to help ‘future proof’ planning decisions. For our coasts a transferable methodology was developed using baseline habitat surveys and habitat modelling (see Annex 3, Final report). In the UK for the South Coast, BRANCH partners assessed habitat distributions using Aerial Photographic Interpretation data at six sites. This data is freely available from Local Records Centres in the UK for the whole of the South East coast (see contacts page). Changes in the extent of intertidal habitat under sea-level rise were modelled for the next 80 years. Modelled outputs were then used to create visualisations of the sites. This visualisation methodology can be used by coastal managers to visualise changes in future coastal landscapes arising from future climate change. It was also tested for the first time at the Baie des Vaies in Normandy, France (see Chapter 7, Annex 3). BRANCH carried out three terrestrial case studies. These informed adaptation strategies (see Annex 4, Final report, ) that planners can use to increase adaptation options for wildlife, including planning where to create new site for nature and improve ecological networks. In Kent, UK, partners developed a for working with local stakeholders to design ecological networks as a climate change adaptation strategy.