Connectivity for species on the move: supporting climate‐driven range shifts

Abstract

Many species are already responding to global climate change by shifting their ranges to track suitable climatic conditions. However, habitat loss and fragmentation, coupled with the rapidity of climate change, make it difficult for species to keep pace. It is therefore unsurprising that enhancing landscape connectivity is the most frequently cited climate‐adaptation strategy for conserving biodiversity. Yet most connectivity planning, even if intended to address climate change, does not directly take climate change and climate‐driven range shifts into account. Nonetheless, several approaches that do explicitly address the unique challenges posed by climate change have recently emerged. We review these connectivity modeling approaches: specifically, how they incorporate species' responses, identify movement routes, and address uncertainties. Despite this proliferation of approaches, conceptual and analytical hurdles remain, and meeting these challenges will be critical to achieving effective landscape connectivity for species in the face of climate change.

Importance of spatio–temporal connectivity to maintain species experiencing range shifts

“…Hence, species persistence will largely depend on future habitat spatial pattern (Årevall et al 2018) and species ability to track their niche in space and time through dispersal (Schloss et al 2012). Understanding how much habitat is reachable for species in a changing environment is, therefore, of paramount importance for conservation (Littlefield et al 2019).…”

Assessing future distribution, suitability of corridors and efficiency of protected areas to conserve vulnerable ungulates under climate change

“…When highly suitable corridors are identified and maintained, species will have the chance to escape from unsuitable conditions resulting in increasing their resiliency to climate change (Hannah, 2011; Morecroft, Crick, Duffield, & Macgregor, 2012). Evaluating landscape connectivity and identifying corridors could be done by employing different approaches, one of the most common of which is using SDMs (Littlefield, Krosby, Michalak, & Lawler, 2019). When applied in the context of climate change, using SDMs offers three main advantages including: (a) identifying opportunities to maintain landscape connectivity based on current distribution of suitable habitats (i.e.…”

“…When applied in the context of climate change, using SDMs offers three main advantages including: (a) identifying opportunities to maintain landscape connectivity based on current distribution of suitable habitats (i.e. stable habitats); (b) considering species‐specific needs for connectivity under climate change with respect to the changes in distribution and availability of suitable habitats in the future (Littlefield et al., 2019); and (c) incorporating anthropogenic impacts into future predictions of species distribution, and identifying pathways assisting their future movements through the least disturbed parts of the landscape.…”

Should I Stay or Should I Go: Partially Sedentary Populations Can Outperform Fully Dispersing Populations in Response to Climate-Induced Range Shifts

“…We do not consider habitat connectivity in our study, and instead assume the newly suitable habitat is completely accessible to the species. In practice, the new climatically suitable range might include habitat unsuitable for growth, even though the climate conditions are suitable (Littlefield et al 2019). There is an extensive body of work exploring the role of habitat heterogeneity in determining travelling wave speeds in IDE models (Dewhirst and Lutscher 2009;Crone et al 2019), and combining this with the partially sedentary moving-habitat model presented here would be a natural step towards formulating a more realistic description of range shifting populations faced with the challenge of poor landscape connectivity.…”