Climate regulation ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation are enhanced differently by climate- and fire-smart landscape management

Abstract

The implementation of climate-smart policies to enhance carbon sequestration and reduce emissions is being encouraged worldwide to fight climate change. Afforestation practices and rewilding initiatives are climate-smart examples suggested to tackle these issues. In contrast, fire-smart approaches, by stimulating traditional farmland activities or agroforestry practices, could also assist climate regulation while protecting biodiversity. However, there is scarce information concerning the potential impacts of these alternative land management strategies on climate regulation ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation. As such, this work simulates future effects of different land management strategies in the Transboundary Biosphere Reserve of Meseta Ibérica (Portugal-Spain). Climate-smart (“Afforestation”, “Rewilding”) and fire-smart (“Farmland recovery”, “Agroforestry recovery”) scenarios were modelled over a period of 60 years (1990–2050), and their impacts on climate regulation services were evaluated. Species distribution models for 207 vertebrates were built and future gains/losses in climate-habitat suitability were quantified. Results suggest climate-smart policies as the best for climate regulation (0.98 Mg C ha-1 yr-1 of mean carbon sequestration increase and 6801.5 M€ of avoided economic losses in 2020-2050 under Afforestation scenarios), while providing the largest habitat gains for threatened species (around 50% for endangered and critically endangered species under Rewilding scenarios). Fire-smart scenarios also benefit carbon regulation services (0.82 Mg C ha-1 yr-1 of mean carbon sequestration increase and 3476.3M€ of avoided economic losses in 2020-2050 under Agroforestry scenarios), benefiting the majority of open-habitat species. This study highlights the main challenges concerning management policies in European rural mountains, while informing decision-makers regarding landscape planning under global change.

Climate- and Fire-Smart Landscape Scenarios Call for Redesigning Protection Regimes to Achieve Multiple Management Goals

“…We considered four landscape management scenarios projected for the study area for the year 2050 (obtained from Campos et al, 2022). These scenarios depict future states of the landscape based on the implementation of forest and agricultural management options ("Afforestation" and "BAU" scenarios) and fire-smart ("FarmReturn" and "AgroforestRe") policies supported by climate.…”

“…Scenarios were defined according to the main trends of landscape change identified in 5 periods (1990-2018; 1990-2000; 2000-2006; 2006-2012 and 2012-2018), selecting the most representative trend for the storyline of each scenario. The landscape management scenarios are defined according to the following storylines (see details in Campos et al, 2022):…”

“…For biodiversity predictive mapping, two sets of species distribution models (SDMs) were used to account for the joint effects of climate and land-use change: (1) SDMs based only on climate predictors, obtained from Campos et al (2021), and (2) SDMs based on Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) and topographic variables, obtained from Campos et al (2022). Both sets were built from presence/absence data for 168 birds, 24 reptiles and 15 amphibians from national atlases at 10-km resolution for the whole Iberian Peninsula to characterise the ecological niche of the species (see Titeux et al, 2017).…”

“…Only locations where species presence was predicted by both climatic and habitat models were used for this study. Complete modelling details are available in Campos et al (2022).…”

Unravelling the effect of climate change on fire danger and fire behaviour in the Transboundary Biosphere Reserve of Meseta Ibérica (Portugal-Spain)

“…List of regional climate models (RCM) and respective institute and driving model used in this study(EURO-CORDEX Data, 2020;Fraga et al 2020;Campos et al 2022) …”