Welcome to the website of the Department of human dimensions of global change, Global Change Research Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences. The aim of this website is to present our projects and research activities in the field of ecosystem services, climate change adaptations, risk and vulnerability minimalisation and a sustainable governance of socio-economic systems. Besides that it provides information about our events and outcomes such as scientific papers, methodologies and map resources. In the future we would like to publish more information about ecosystem services and connected issues. 

About our team

The Department of human dimensions of global change is a young and expanding interdisciplinary team that was established as a part of the excellence centre CzechGlobe  in the end of 2010. The team settled down in scientifical field not only in the Czech republic but also in an international context due to its participation in EU FP7 and Horizon 2020 projects.

The scientifical team has reached significant results in a couple of fields, mainly an analysis and modelling of ecosystem services, climate change adaptation, risk assessment, socio-ecologic research and sustainable governance of ecosystems.  Main outcomes include not only various scientific work but also applied research results such as certified methodologies or map resources. We also organise workshops and conferences.

Our activities

Within our projects we focus especially on an integrated assessment of mutual relationships among human society, natural systems and global change. Sudden as well as progressive changes of ecosystems have various impacts on human society and different components of human life and well-being. One of our integrating concepts are ecosystem services which can be defined as a contribution of ecosystems to the economy and human well-being or as benefits provided by nature to human society. 

Another principal topic is the issue of climate change adaptation and minimalisation of risks and catastrophes. In this field we focus on an assessment of vulnerability of human society and ecosystems, as well as on an assessment of adaptive capacity of human society and design of politically acceptable adaptation measures. We develop participative approaches for a preparation and implementation of adaptation strategies and work with different scenarios based not only on scientifical conclusions but also defined by stakeholders. 

The issues we focus on within projects dealing with ecosystem services and climate change adaptation are usually related to different levels of decision making. Our aim is to provide scientifically based outcomes that are politically relevant and can be used for decision making and sustainable governance of socio-ecologic systems. We activelly participate in a wide range of international initiatives and projects in the field of ecosystem services and climate change adaptation, for example Ecosystem Services Partnership (ESP) where we are engaged in several working groups, or in IPBES where members of our team have been involved in Regional and Global Assessments and Thematic and Methodological Issues.