Vegetation refugia can inform climate‐adaptive land management under global warming

Abstract

Natural resource managers need information about the risks associated with climate change to provide guidance on where to implement various management practices on natural lands. The spatial variation of projected impacts within a vegetation type can be used to target climate-adaptive management actions because different locations will be exposed to different levels of climatic stress. Vegetation refugia are areas that retain non-stressful climate conditions under future climates. Consensus vegetation refugia -areas retaining suitable climates under both wetter and drier future projections -represent only 14.6% of California's natural vegetation. One state and one federal government agency have incorporated vegetation refugia maps into conservation planning for 522 vertebrate species and for post-wildfire reforestation. Monitoring how vegetation responds to management actions at sites within vegetation refugia can improve the conservation of plants subjected to a changing climate.

Climate‐change refugia: biodiversity in the slow lane

“…For instance, the US Forest Service is incorporating projections of vegetative climate refugia locations into restoration planning for areas affected by the 2014 King Fire in California (Thorne et al . ). Likewise, The Nature Conservancy has led a proactive planning initiative that focuses on principles of ecological resilience and protection of topographically and geologically diverse landscapes (Anderson et al .…”

“…For example, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife is using locations of vegetative climate refugia within the range of a suite of vertebrate species to embed climate risk in land management and regulatory considerations (Thorne et al . ).…”

“…; Thorne et al . ) are improving the spatial resolution at which climate‐change refugia may be identified, as well as the capacity for testing spatial hypotheses on landscape features (Morelli et al . ; Barrows et al .…”

“…; Thorne et al . ) and hydrologic integrity (Cartwright et al . ) at watershed to ecoregional scales.…”

Conserving Refugia: What Are We Protecting and Why?

“…Co-occurring species with different trait combinations (e.g., drought tolerance traits reflecting vessel architecture, or dispersal traits such as seed size) can also identify areas of high conservation significance and provide impetus for the development of site-or habitat-specific management strategies [11,60]. This is particularly relevant to the WHGR where functional grouping based on life-history characters can be used to bring together taxa that could respond to selective processes, environmental threats and management actions in similar ways [61].…”