Are Flemish natural areas sufficiently robust to adapt to climate change with respect to species of European and Flemish conservation priority?

Climate change poses one of the greatest threats to the survival of species and biotopes worldwide.
Species can react to a changing climate in 3 different ways:
1) Shifting with or extending the area to the appropriate climate zone
2) adapt to the new climate on the spot
3) local extinction

Threatened and/or habitat-typical species are often limited to nature reserves and are often not mobile enough to expand their acreage to new areas or to move with the most suitable climate zone. Especially in highly industrialised and densely populated regions such as Flanders, nature reserves are highly fragmented, and many species are in danger of disappearing because they can not or barely move through the landscape.

With this project we want to investigate whether the current nature reserves are able to accommodate European and Flemish priority species (the \policy species\) in the event of a progressive climate change, or to accommodate species to adapt locally to a new climate. By nature areas we do not only mean habitat and bird directive areas, but also nature areas of private nature organisations.