Incorporating future climate uncertainty into the identification of climate change refugia for threatened species

Beaumont, Linda J.; Esperón-Rodríguez, Manuel; Nipperess, David A.; Wauchope-Drumm, Mareshell; Baumgartner, John B.

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2019.07.013

Cited by 41 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…A (Cavazos et al 2013;Fernández Eguiarte et al 2015). Nevertheless, we acknowledge that different climate scenarios can produce different results, which might affect conservation and management actions (Beaumont et al 2019;Baumgartner et al 2018;Graham et al 2019). Further, by selecting the scenario RCP8.5 with the highest radiative forcing and CO 2 emissions, our predictions might overestimate the losses of climatic space, in contrast to using a more conservative scenario, such as RCP6.0 (Raftery et al 2017).…”

Section: What Are the Caveats And Limitations Of Our Study?mentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Effective conservation and management practices depend strongly on our ability to predict the impacts of climate change on natural and human-managed ecosystems (Mawdsley et al 2009). However, predicting the impacts of climate change is particularly challenging, due to the complexities of climatic processes and uncertainty about the rate and magnitude of changes (Baumgartner et al 2018;Beaumont et al 2019;Fatichi et al 2016;Grierson et al 2011;Loarie et al 2009;Ohlemüller 2011). As changes in climate intensify, assessments of the extent to which the available climatic space may change are particularly important in order to identify species most threatened by changing climate (Guisan et al 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Climate change threatens the most biodiverse regions of Mexico

Esperón-Rodríguez

Beaumont

Lenoir

et al. 2019

Biological Conservation

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Climate change threatens Earth's biodiversity, although its impacts are variable and depend on the capacity of species and ecosystems to cope with the magnitude and speed of change. Natural protected areas (NPAs) constitute potential refugia for species' persistence and for sustaining the provisioning of ecosystem services. Biosphere reserves are NPAs that are less altered by human actions and provide habitat to endemic, threatened or endangered species. Here, we aim to evaluate the threat imposed by climate change on the network of biosphere reserves in Mexico. Focusing on five bioclimatic variables, we computed the climatic spacemeasured as an n-dimensional hypervolume-of 40 NPAs. Increases in temperature are predicted for all NPAs by 2050, whereas decreases in annual rainfall are predicted for 30 NPAs. By 2050, 31 NPAs that provide habitat to 22,866 recorded species are predicted to lose 100% of their baseline climatic space, shifting to completely novel climates. On average, the other nine NPAs are predicted to lose 55.7% (SD = 26.7%) of their baseline climatic space, while 54.5% (SD = 32.5%) of the future climatic space will be novel. Seventeen NPAs may lose climate variability (homogenization), decreasing species' niches. The extent to which non-analogue conditions will remain within the tolerance of species and ecosystems is currently unknown. Finally, we propose a vulnerability index to categorise NPAs based on their loss of existing climatic space, total geographic area, species richness, and uniqueness of species composition, finding los Tuxtlas and Tiburon Ballena as the most and least vulnerable NPAs, respectively.

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Section: What Are the Caveats And Limitations Of Our Study?mentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change threatens the most biodiverse regions of Mexico

Esperón-Rodríguez

Beaumont

Lenoir

et al. 2019

Biological Conservation

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“…Climate models can distinguish areas less susceptible to future environmental change, or areas that in the predicted future will become suitable for specific vegetation types or selected species [42]. ENM-based approaches incorporating future climate uncertainty across large numbers of species, can also identify areas of high environmental stability inferred from contemporary species distributions fitting the definition of future refugia [43]. For species with little protected habitat within those future-proofed areas, active transplant of putatively adapted genomes might be considered as an option to increase overall viability of local populations [44].…”

Section: Future Refugiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Conserving Refugia: What Are We Protecting and Why?

Rossetto

Kooyman

2021

Diversity

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Refugia play an important role in contributing to the conservation of species and communities by buffering environmental conditions over time. As large natural landscapes worldwide are declining and are increasingly threatened by extreme events, critical decision-making in biological conservation depends on improved understanding of what is being protected by refugia and why. We provide three novel definitions for refugia (i.e., persistent, future, and temporary) that incorporate ecological and evolutionary dynamics into a land management decision framework and are applicable across changing temporal and spatial settings. Definitions are supported by identification, core value, and management strategy criteria to assist short- and long-term decision-making. We illustrate these concepts using the World Heritage Gondwana Rainforests (WHGR) of eastern Australia, briefly exploring the spatial and temporal factors that can inform the development of conservation management strategies following the extreme fire events of 2019–2020. For the WHGR, available knowledge can be used to protect critical assets by recognizing and implementing buffer zones and corridor connections, and by undertaking emergency translocations of target species into safe areas that will act as future refugia. More broadly, we suggest that the identification and protection of ecological and evolutionary processes across varying temporal and spatial scales is central to securing improved biodiversity conservation outcomes.

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“…the Guam Rail (Hypotaenidia owstoni), the Inaccessible Island rail (Atlantisia rogersi) and the Lord Howe woodhen (Gallirallus sylvestris). Further research is needed to forecast the impacts of climate change on such restricted species in order to accurately determine the most adequate conservation measures to implement, such as defining climatic refugia, translocations or captivity plans (Seddon et al, 2014;Braidwood et al, 2018;Garnett & Reside, 2018;Beaumont et al, 2019).…”

Section: Conservation Efforts Gaps and Prioritiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterising the spatio-temporal threats, conservation hotspots, and conservation gaps for the most extinction-prone bird family (Aves: Rallidae)

Lévêque¹,

Buettel

Carver³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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With thousands of vertebrate species now threatened with extinction, there is an urgent need to understand and mitigate the causes of wildlife collapse. As distinct evolutionary clades can follow different routes to endangerment, there is value in taxon-specific analyses when assessing species’ vulnerability to threats and identifying gaps in conservation actions. Rails (Aves: Rallidae), being the most extinction-prone bird Family globally, and with one third of extant rail species now threatened or near-threatened, are an emphatic case in point. Yet even for this well-studied group, there is uncertainty in our understanding of what factors might be causing this vulnerability, whether the current threats are consistent with those that led to recent extinctions, and ultimately, what conservation actions might be necessary to mitigate further losses. Here, we undertook a global synthesis of the temporal and spatial threat patterns for Rallidae and determined conservation priorities and gaps. We found two key pathways in the threat pattern for rails. One follows the same trajectory as extinct rails, where island endemic and flightless rails are most threatened, mainly due to invasive predators. The second, created by the recent diversification of anthropogenic activities, involves continental rails (generally in the Neotropics), threatened most commonly by agriculture, natural-system modifications and residential and commercial development. Conservation efforts around most-at-risk species should be adapted according to the most relevant geographic scale (bioregions or countries), and principal locality type of the population (continental or island endemic). Indonesia, the U.S.A., the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Cuba were the priority countries identified by our classification system incorporating species’ unique evolutionary features and level of endangerment, but also among the countries that lack conservation actions the most. Future efforts should predominantly target improvements in ecosystem protection and management, as well as ongoing research and monitoring. Forecasting the impacts of climate change on island endemic rails and disentangling the specific roles of extrinsic and intrinsic traits (like flightlessness), will be particularly valuable avenues of research for improving our forecasts of rail vulnerability.

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Incorporating future climate uncertainty into the identification of climate change refugia for threatened species

Cited by 41 publications

References 45 publications

Climate change threatens the most biodiverse regions of Mexico

Climate change threatens the most biodiverse regions of Mexico

Conserving Refugia: What Are We Protecting and Why?

Characterising the spatio-temporal threats, conservation hotspots, and conservation gaps for the most extinction-prone bird family (Aves: Rallidae)

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