How will ecosystem services and biodiversity in Bavaria develop until the year 2100? The interdisciplinary joint project BLIZ takes an outlook to the future and develops new scenarios for sustainable management of ecosystems. Taking an innovative and interdisciplinary approach, scientists from the fields of economics, ecology and cultural geography study feedbacks between socio-economic systems (land use development) and ecological systems (ecosystem services and biodiversity) under changing climatic conditions. Following this approach, BLIZ analyses which adaptation strategies lead to a stabilization of these systems and under which conditions drastic ecological degradation or socio-economic changes (“tipping points”) may occur.

Besides the Chair of Agricultural Production and Resource Economics four more chairs of the Technical University of Munich are involved in the project as well as one chair each of the universities of Würzburg, Erlangen-Nürnberg, and Regensburg. BLIZ is funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of the Environment and Consumer Protection.