Tools for planners

The overall goal of BRANCH is to develop, trial and promote the planning policies and tools that are necessary for Europe’s biodiversity to adapt to the predicted impacts of climate change.

In May and June 2007 a series of workshops and online training material are being produced to form our planner 'training' programme. The workshops are aimed at planners and policy makers at all levels across England, France and the Netherlands. They aim to help planners develop an understanding of biodiversity and climate change, gain new tools and better respond to the challenge of adapting to climate change. For further details click here

An informative initial output for planners is the review of planning policy relating to biodiversity and climate change. This was produced in consultation with spatial planners across all three partner countries France, Netherlands and UK.

The Environmental Change Institute in Oxford has also modelled future suitable climate space for a variety of species under varying climate scenarios, using the 'SPECIES' model (as developed in MONARCH). This uses 2 different Global Circulation Models, the Parallel Climate Model and Hadley Centre Model, and applies 3 IPCC SRES (Special Report on Emissions Scenarios) to reflect different projections of global emissions into the future. Maps showing variation in suitable climate space across Europe for 389 species, have then been produced for 3 time slices 2020's, 2050's and 2080's. To view these results click here. You will first need to email enquiries@branchproject.org to request login details.

On an external webpage for the Tyndall Centre for climate change research a number of example computer simulations created for our UK coastal case study sites are available to download. These are in AVI and Quicktime formats and are very large files see site. You will first need to email enquiries@branchproject.org to request login details. Alternatively examples in PowerPoint are available under reports and publications

Many stakeholder workshops have taken place in 2006 and 2007 as part of BRANCH's remit to actively involving planners and end-users in testing and refining the tools being produced. The presentations from these contain useful information on the project's work in progress and initial results (see reports and publications). We are happy to hear from you if you wish to inform our work, find out more or attend a future event.