The Alpine Resilience Atlas combines IIASA’s FLAM wildfire projections with Alpine forest data and other hazard information to identify areas of compound climate and forest vulnerability.

The Alpine Resilience Atlas, developed through the EU-funded MOSAIC project, brings together spatial data, modelling results, field experience, and management knowledge on protective forests across the Alps.

Key facts

  • Interactive web GIS with downloadable spatial layers, models, stories, and Forest Living Lab information.
  • FLAM projections are used to assess changing wildfire risk under climate change.
  • Hotspot maps combine wildfire projections with information on 28 Alpine tree species and forest cover to identify areas where increasing fire risk and potentially vulnerable forest stands coincide.
  • The Atlas provides access to complementary forest and hazard models developed by MOSAIC partners, including avalanche, forest disturbance, and landscape-dynamics models.

What the Atlas does

Every map in the Atlas is a real geographic information system in a browser window, not a picture of one. Users can switch basemaps, toggle layers, adjust layer opacity, click a feature to read its attributes, right-click to copy coordinates, upload their own shapefile as a zip to overlay on the analysis, and download the underlying layer as a shapefile to take into their own GIS.

Stories currently host 23 illustrated long-form articles about a real place and a real event, each with its own interactive map embedded in the text. Readers can filter stories by eight categories: Avalanche, Bark Beetle, Communication, Models, Rockfall, Tools, Wildfire and Windstorm. A “Surprise me” button picks one at random.

Forest Living Labs is an interactive map of field sites across Slovenia, Italy, Austria, Switzerland and France. Each site opens a card listing its main hazards, its actual management problem, a photograph, and a downloadable fact sheet. A Catalogue “Protective Forest Management in the Alps: An Illustrated Guide” draws together results from all of the project's components and from the network of the Forest Living Labs featuring the aggregated results for measures behind resilient Alpine protective forests. It is downloadable in English, French, German, Italian and Slovenian.

Hotspot Maps is a screening of Alpine tree species that demonstrates where vulnerable species and rising fire risk share the same ground. A collection of curated Datasets and Models is available, too. In addition, the web site features a term glossary, defining the vocabulary that usually divides the communities, so that the project speaks the common language.

 

Hotspot maps

Maps that combine and mix several data sources help see where the fire risk meets the tree species and where the compound vulnerability really is. The Hotspot maps prepared by INRAE , ONF, and IIASA, which provided cross FLAM fire projections under climate change with a 1 km grid of presence probability for all 28 species, clipped to Copernicus forest cover so that every hotspot is a real stand. A slope where fire risk climbs steeply is no priority if the trees on it can cope, and a milder rise matters if they cannot.

Climate change hotspots - Probable impact class for the selected tree species © alpineresilience.org

Open source – end to end

The Atlas runs on open-source software. The interface is built with Vue; the maps with OpenLayers; the spatial data is served by GeoServer over open standards, which means any GIS client can consume the Atlas's layers directly, without going through the website at all. The application is containerized and orchestrated with Docker and Kubernetes, and served behind nginx. There is no proprietary platform in the stack, no per-seat license, no vendor whose pricing decisions can one day put this research behind a paywall.

 

Anyone can contribute

Contributions are accepted from anyone. Data, models, stories, and field experience are welcome. Some examples of what the project is looking for is regional windthrow inventory nobody has published, a rockfall event database sitting in a municipal office, or a model someone wrote for one valley that would work in other valleys. The Atlas was built to hold exactly this kind of thing. Fill a story submission or data upload form or reach out to Pavel Kiparisov.

 

MOSAIC (Managing prOtective foreSt fAcIng clImate Change compound events) focuses on hazard-resilient and sustainable protective forest management in the face of climate change. The project collects, harmonizes and shares up-to-date data, models and trends on Alpine spaces, their climate and associated hazards, in support of regional and Alpine climate action plans, and works to raise awareness among foresters, risk managers, decision-makers and the public through an Alpine network of Forest Living Labs. MOSAIC is co-funded by the European Union through the Interreg Alpine Space programme (2021-2027).