How robust are global conservation priorities to climate change?

Published Date

October 2013, Vol.23(5):1277–1284, doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.07.016

Title 

How robust are global conservation priorities to climate change?

• Author 

• Takuya Iwamura ^a,,
• Antoine Guisan ^b,c
• Kerrie A. Wilson ^a
• Hugh P. Possingham ^a,d

• aAustralian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia
• bDepartment of Ecology and Evolution (DEE), University of Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
• cInstitute of Earth Sciences, Geopolis, University of Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
• dDepartment of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, Berkshire, United Kingdom

Received 13 November 2012. Revised 15 July 2013. Accepted 21 July 2013. Available online 17 August 2013.

Highlights

• •
  Global conservation hotspots were examined for their robustness to climate change.
• •
  We developed the climate similarity index by applying ecological niche overlap.
• •
  Substantial differences among hotspots correlate with their site selection rules.
• •
  Risk of a certain selection rule with regard to climate change is highlighted.

Abstract

International conservation organisations have identified priority areas for biodiversity conservation. These global-scale prioritisations affect the distribution of funds for conservation interventions. As each organisation has a different focus, each prioritisation scheme is determined by different decision criteria and the resultant priority areas vary considerably. However, little is known about how the priority areas will respond to the impacts of climate change. In this paper, we examined the robustness of eight global-scale prioritisations to climate change under various climate predictions from seven global circulation models. We developed a novel metric of the climate stability for 803 ecoregions based on a recently introduced method to estimate the overlap of climate envelopes. The relationships between the decision criteria and the robustness of the global prioritisation schemes were statistically examined. We found that decision criteria related to level of endemism and landscape fragmentation were strongly correlated with areas predicted to be robust to a changing climate. Hence, policies that prioritise intact areas due to the likely cost efficiency, and assumptions related to the potential to mitigate the impacts of climate change, require further examination. Our findings will help determine where additional management is required to enable biodiversity to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

• International biodiversity conservation
• Biodiversity hotspots
• Climate change
• Terrestrial ecoregions
• Climate envelopes
• Climate stability index

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• DOC (614K)

• ⁎ 
  Corresponding author. Present address: Department of Biology and Department of Environmental Earth System Science, Stanford University, Room 350, Y2E2 Building, 473 Via Ortega, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.

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