SYNOPSIS Challenges to Adaptation in Northernmost Europe as a Result of Global Climate Change

Global warming will continue, and the Arctic is expected to warm at twice the global average rate (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007). The most pronounced changes will occur during winter with increased precipitation, more precipitation falling as rain, and a shorter snow period (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007; Roderfeld et al. 2008). These changes will have far-reaching consequences for ecosystems and for the people dependent on their services and may serve as an indicator of environmental change and an ‘‘early warning system’’ for other parts of the world (Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, Symon et al. 2005). We assessed the likely changes in the provision of goods and services from natural and seminatural ecosystems (i.e., excluding urban, industrial, and agricultural land) in the Barents region—the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and northwestern Russia—as a consequence of anticipated climate changes during the twenty-first century. This region includes approximately six million people in an area the size of France, Portugal, Spain, and Germany together, totaling 1.75 million km; 75% of the territory and population is Russian. Several indigenous peoples and minority groups, such as the Sami, Nenets, Vepsians, and Komi, live in the region (Barents Information Service 2008). Globally, the Barents region is the Arctic region that is the most geographically complex with the most infrastructure and great cultural, social, and political heterogeneity. Its economy depends heavily upon the extraction of natural resources (Barents Information Service 2008). We foresee that many provisioning ecosystem services, including forestry, hunting, fishing, and gathering, will improve as a result of, for example, the higher survival and reproduction of the populations of many species, whereas other services will deteriorate due to habitat loss, invasion of nonnative species, and altered species interactions (Chapin et al. 2006). Regulating services, such as water cycling, will also change, with a predicted increase in discharge, leading to the potential production of more hydroelectricity (Lehner et al. 2005). Human societies should be able to cope with most of these changes by This synopsis was not peer reviewed.