How can climate change uncertainty be considered in the analysis?

For a serious analysis it is not sufficient to use one “representative” climate change scenario. It should be standard approach to use a set of scenarios which should represent the range of expected changes in both, temperature and precipitation (and possibly also other climate variables). Particularly for preciptation the results of climate model projections do differ substantially and may include for the same region increases as well as decreases. The performance of BAU and alternative management options under such a set of climate change scenarios indicates how sensitive the delivery of ecosystem services may respond to interacting climate change and management. Management options which are very sensitive towards climate conditions are risky as long as there is high uncertainty regarding the future climate. In a soft but intuitive approach the key determinants are then (i) the importance of a particular ecosystem service, (ii) the opportunity to find a management approach which hedges against a wide range of possible future climates, and (iii) the cost of this “robustness” towards multiple climate futures.