Integrating Climate Change and Land Use Impacts to Explore Forest Conservation Policy

Choe, Hyeyeong; Thorne, James H.

doi:10.3390/f8090321

Cited by 14 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 45 publications

(40 reference statements)

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“…In addition, many species are expected to shift their ranges in response to shifting climates and biogeochemical drivers [ 57 ]. Therefore, conservation planning also needs to consider the impacts of future climate scenarios [ 58 , 59 ]. Although this study only considered species’ current suitable environments, focusing on climate vulnerable species in designating additional PAs would be one of the climate mitigation activities for conserving ecosystems.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing shortfalls and complementary conservation areas for national plant biodiversity in South Korea

et al. 2018

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Protected areas (PAs) are often considered the most important biodiversity conservation areas in national plans, but PAs often do not represent national-scale biodiversity. We evaluate the current conservation status of plant biodiversity within current existing PAs, and identify potential additional PAs for South Korea. We modeled species ranges for 2,297 plant species using Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines and compared the level of mean range representation in South Korea’s existing PAs, which comprise 5.7% of the country’s mainland area, with an equal-area alternative PA strategy selected with the reserve algorithm Marxan. We also used Marxan to model two additional conservation scenarios that add lands to approach the Aichi Biodiversity Target objectives (17% of the country). Existing PAs in South Korea contain an average of 6.3% of each plant species’ range, compared to 5.9% in the modeled equal-area alternative. However, existing PAs primarily represent a high percentage of the ranges for high-elevation and small range size species. The additional PAs scenario that adds lands to the existing PAs covers 14,587.55 km2, and would improve overall plant range representation to a mean of 16.8% of every species’ range. The other additional PAs scenario, which selects new PAs from all lands and covers 13,197.35 km2, would improve overall plant range representation to a mean of 13.5%. Even though the additional PAs that includes existing PAs represents higher percentages of species’ ranges, it is missing many biodiversity hotspots in non-mountainous areas and the additional PAs without locking in the existing PAs represent almost all species’ ranges evenly, including low-elevation ones with larger ranges. Some priority conservation areas we identified are expansions of, or near, existing PAs, especially in northeastern and southern South Korea. However, lowland coastal areas and areas surrounding the capital city, Seoul, are also critical for biodiversity conservation in South Korea.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing shortfalls and complementary conservation areas for national plant biodiversity in South Korea

et al. 2018

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“…Tropical forests, home to a disproportionate amount of the world's biodiversity, are experiencing some of the largest declines (França et al, 2020;Hansen et al, 2013;IPBES, 2019;Song et al, 2018). Land use change is the leading cause of forest declines worldwide (Choe & Thorne, 2017;FAO & UNEP, 2020;Ostberg et al, 2015;WWF, 2020) with recent estimates, suggesting that only 24% of tropical forests are still intact (Lewis et al, 2015). In addition, there is an increasing concern regarding the impacts of climate change, with research suggesting that its effects could be already eclipsing those of land use change on 60% of the global land surface (Ostberg et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of climate in past forest loss in an ecologically important region of South Asia

Haughan

Pettorelli

Potts

et al. 2022

Global Change Biology

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Tropical forests in India have declined at an alarming rate over the past century, with extensive literature focusing on the high contributions of agricultural expansions to deforestation, while the effects of climate change have largely been overlooked. Climate change effects, such as increasing temperatures, drought and flooding, have already occurred, and are projected to worsen. Climate velocity, a metric that accounts for spatial heterogeneity in climate, can help identify contiguous areas under greater climate stress and potential climate refuges in addition to traditional temporal trends. Here, we examined the relative contribution of climate changes to forest loss in India during the period 2001–2018, at two spatial (regional and national) and two temporal (seasonal and annual) scales. This includes, for the first time, a characterization of climate velocity in the country. Our findings show that annual forest loss increased substantially over the 17‐year period examined (2001–2018), with the majority of forest loss occurring in the Northeast region. Decreases in temporal trends of temperature and precipitation were most associated with forest losses, but there was large spatial and seasonal variation in the relationship. In every region except the Northeast, forest losses were correlated with faster velocities of at least one climate variable but overlapping areas of high velocities were rare. Our findings indicate that climate changes have played an important role in India's past forest loss, but likely remain secondary to other factors at present. We stress concern for climates velocities recorded in the country, reaching 97 km year−1, and highlight that understanding the different regional and seasonal relationships between climatic conditions and forest distributions will be key to effective protection of the country's remaining forests as climate change accelerates.

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“…Our study also found high species richness of rarity classes and of nationally listed endangered and endemic species in each rarity class in these mountains (Figure and Figure ), which indicates our simple approach can identify high biodiversity areas for rare species. We suggest that further field surveys in these areas could help identify high priority plant conservation areas, that biological monitoring focused on tracking populations of narrow geographic range plant species be implemented in the northeastern parts of South Korea, and that regional urban development and land use plans should consider the preservation of the high biodiversity in this area (Choe & Thorne, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating the Rabinowitz rarity framework with a National Plant Inventory in South Korea

Choe

Thorne

Hijmans

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

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Increasingly large presence‐only survey datasets are becoming available for use in conservation assessments. Potentially, these records could be used to determine spatial patterns of plant species rarity and endemism. We test the integration of a large South Korean species record database with Rabinowitz rarity classes. Rabinowitz proposed seven classes of species rarity using three variables: geographic range, habitat specificity, and local population size. We estimated the range size and local abundance of 2,215 plant species from species occurrence records and habitat specificity as the number of landcover types each species’ records were found in. We classified each species into a rarity class or as common, compared species composition by class to national lists, and mapped the spatial pattern of species richness for each rarity class. Species were classed to narrow or wide geographic ranges using 315 km, the average from a range size index of all species (D max), based on maximum distance between observations. There were four classes each within the narrow and wide range groups, sorted using cutoffs of local abundance and habitat specificity. Nationally listed endangered species only appeared in the narrow‐range classes, while nationally listed endemic species appeared in almost all classes. Species richness in most rarity classes was high in northeastern South Korea especially for species with narrow ranges. Policy implications. Large presence‐only surveys may be able to estimate some classes of rarity better than others, but modification to include estimates of local abundance and habitat types, could greatly increase their utility. Application of the Rabinowitz rarity framework to such surveys can extend their utility beyond species distribution models and can identify areas that need further surveys and for conservation priority. Future studies should be aware of the subjectivity of the rarity classification and that regional scale implementations of the framework may differ.

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Integrating Climate Change and Land Use Impacts to Explore Forest Conservation Policy

Cited by 14 publications

References 45 publications

Assessing shortfalls and complementary conservation areas for national plant biodiversity in South Korea

Assessing shortfalls and complementary conservation areas for national plant biodiversity in South Korea

The role of climate in past forest loss in an ecologically important region of South Asia

Integrating the Rabinowitz rarity framework with a National Plant Inventory in South Korea

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