Publishing trends on climate change vulnerability in the conservation literature reveal a predominant focus on direct impacts and long time‐scales

Abstract

Over the past twelve years the number of papers that explore the impacts of climate change on biodiversity in the conservation literature has grown on average by 20% annually. By categorising these papers on their primary research questions, we show that the vast majority of these articles (88.6%) focus only on those impacts that arise directly as a result of climate change, ignoring the potentially significant indirect threats that arise from human adaptation responses. This pattern has remained fairly consistent throughout the review period (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012), with a trend towards more articles considering both direct and indirect impacts towards the end of the period. We also find a bias in the time-frames considered by published articles that project future impacts of climate change on biodiversity, with more than three-quarters (77.9%) of papers only considering impacts after 2031, and almost half (49.1%) only considering impacts after 2051. This focus on long-term, direct impacts creates a mismatch, not only with the life-cycles of species and timescales of many ecological processes, but also with most management and policy timelines and the short-term nature of human decision making processes. The focus on studying the long-term, direct impacts of climate change on biodiversity is likely a function of the lack of availability of climate projections on shorter temporal scales; a perception that short-term impacts will be minor; and, insufficient integration with the social and political sciences. While the direct impact of changes in mean climatic conditions will significantly change the biosphere by the end of the century, near term changes in seasonality and extreme events coupled with human adaptation responses are likely to have substantial impacts much sooner, threatening the survival of species and ecosystems. It is therefore essential that we balance our research efforts to facilitate a better understanding of these more imminent threats.

Ocean acidification alters fish populations indirectly through habitat modification

“…Here, we demonstrate the first example of where predicted changes to ocean environmental conditions increase the resources available to vertebrates, countering direct negative behavioural effects, and increasing survival and population size. The ways in which such direct and indirect effects of global change have the potential to modify population and community dynamics through altered species interactions is barely understood, and sometimes counter-intuitive, limiting our ability to predict species responses to anthropogenic environmental change and the potential cascading effects on ecosystem functioning 13,14 .…”

Grand Challenges in Understanding the Interplay of Climate and Land Changes

“…Understanding of the pathways through which future climate change will affect human systems through impacts on LCLUC is limited. Few studies have examined interdependencies between social and ecological systems, integrating future scenarios in the context of risk assessment and management or focusing on developing qualitative scenario planning approaches (Wu et al 2013;Chapman et al 2014;Wang et al 2014;Tucker et al 2015).…”

Old concepts, new challenges: adapting landscape-scale conservation to the twenty-first century

“…Nonetheless, with continuing land-use change leading to an increasingly fragmented landscape, there are frequently situations where it is physically not possible to create large sites due to surrounding land ownership or social and/or cultural costs of using a particular space (Williams et al 2005). Moreover, people are altering their behaviour in response to climate change (Chapman et al 2014), shifting agricultural regimes, modifying transport routes and building coastal defences, for example (see Segan et al 2015). These indirect impacts of climate change can create additional barriers to creating large sites for conservation.…”

“…Bigger sites and multiple smaller sites each offer benefits for climate change adaptation, whilst the functional connectivity required for this challenge can be improved through a focus on other strategies which encourage stable abundance. Indirect impacts associated with climate change have seldom been recognised in the literature (Chapman et al 2014) but can further complicate the ability to adopt particular strategies, or the overall effectiveness of those employed. With the potential of people to shift agricultural practices, for example, utilising numerous smaller sites may enable people to exploit areas of land in between, as opposed to entering those areas designated for wildlife (Bradley et al 2012).…”