Efficiency of protected areas in Amazon and Atlantic Forest conservation: A spatio-temporal view

Abstract

The Amazon and Atlantic Forest are considered the world's most biodiverse biomes. Human and climate change impacts are the principal drivers of species loss in both biomes, more severely in the Atlantic Forest. In response to species loss, the main conservation action is the creation of protected areas (PAs). Current knowledge and research on the PA network's conservation efficiency is scarce, and existing studies have mainly considered a past temporal view. In this study, we tested the efficiency of the current PA network to maintain climatically stable areas (CSAs) across the Amazon and Atlantic Forest. To this, we used an ecological niche modeling approach to biome and paleoclimatic simulations. We propose three categories of conservation priority areas for both biomes, considering CSAs, PAs and intact forest remnants. The biomes vary in their respective PA networks' protection efficiency. Regarding protect CSAs, the Amazon PA network is four times more efficient than the Atlantic Forest PA network. New conservation efforts in these two forest biomes require different approaches. We discussed the conservation actions that should be taken in each biome to increase the efficiency of the PA network, considering both the creation and expansion of PAs as well as restoration programs.

Habitat‐specific impacts of climate change in the Mata Atlântica biodiversity hotspot

“…These findings are of relevance for conservation planning predicated on the protection of biodiversity under climate change scenarios. Because there is a considerable level of plant endemism in both core and marginal habitats , a portion of such species could be neglected if future conservation strategies prioritise regions of highest climatic stability regardless of habitat heterogeneity (e.g., Lemes et al, 2013;Ferro et al, 2014;Loyola et al, 2014;Zwiener et al, 2017, Sobral-Souza, Vancine, Ribeiro, & Lima-Ribeiro, 2018, but core and marginal habitats are unevenly distributed across these stable regions.…”

Past, present and future distributions of bumblebees in South America: Identifying priority species and areas for conservation

“…In this context, knowledge of the most vulnerable species is useful to determine conservation priorities and provides a framework for creating protected areas (PAs). The most common method assumes that PAs should encompass areas with greater species diversity (Cabeza & Moilanen, 2001; Sobral‐Souza, Vancine, & Ribeiro, 2018). However, because PAs protect populations in a static space and species distribution patterns are dynamic over time, PAs created with current information on species diversity may not adequately protect endangered species in the long term (Araújo, Williams, & Fuller, 2002).…”

Updating the distribution of Vampyrum spectrum (Chiroptera, Phyllostomidae) in Colombia: new localities, potential distribution and notes on its conservation

“…Correlative environmental niche modelling (ENM) attempts to model a species' relationship with environmental variables and predict habitat suitability for that species based on known observations of its presence. Although ENM techniques are inherently limited by imperfect knowledge, they have nonetheless proven extremely useful in assessing the effectiveness of Protected Areas distribution (Catullo et al 2008), assessing species' vulnerability to proposed local land use change (Santos et al 2013), predicting distributions of rare species (Marino et al 2011;Rheingantz et al 2014) and possible responses to climate change by species and ecosystems (Moor et al 2015;Sobral-Souza et al 2018). Due to the limited information on the distribution of V. spectrum in Colombia, environmental niche models could be extremely useful for predicting the distribution of this species in several areas of the country.…”