ATEAM's main objective is to assess the vulnerability of human sectors relying on ecosystem services with respect to global change. Ecosystem services are the conditions and processes through which ecosystems, and the organisms that make them up, sustain and fulfil human life. Vulnerability is the degree to which an ecosystem service is sensitive to global change plus the degree to which the sector that relies on this service is unable to cope with the changes. ATEAM's integrative assessment approach includes several tasks: developing a comprehensive modelling framework for predicting the dynamics of services provided by major European terrestrial ecosystems at a regional scale. developing macro-scale indicators of society's adaptive capacity to changes in ecosystem service provision. developing a range of scenarios for socio-economic development, land-use change, pollution levels, atmospheric composition and climate change up to the year 2100. maintaining a continuous dialogue with stakeholders to ensure the applicability of results for the management of natural resources. developing a series of maps depicting regions and sectors that are especially vulnerable to global change.

The Department of Geography at the Université catholique de Louvain has an international reputation in research in land-use/land-cover changes and locational analysis. This includes research within the rural, urban and transport sectors, both in Europe and tropical regions. The Department aims to develop an interdisciplinary approach to its research that brings together a variety of methods in both economic and physical geography. Thus, the research of the Department has focused on the analysis, modelling and monitoring of spatially-distributed land surface processes. Within ATEAM, UCL is responsible for the development and application of an internally-consistent set of scenarios of biophysicaland socio-economic change drivers for ecosystem process modelling. This includes scenarios of atmospheric CO2, climate change, land use change and nitrogen deposition that are based on the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios framework.