The capacity of refugia for conservation planning under climate change
- 29 January 2015
- journal article
- Published by Wiley in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment
- Vol. 13 (2), 106-112
- https://doi.org/10.1890/140055
Abstract
Refugia – areas that may facilitate the persistence of species during large-scale, long-term climatic change –are increasingly important for conservation planning. There are many methods for identifying refugia, but the ability to quantify their potential for facilitating species persistence (ie their "capacity") remains elusive. We propose a flexible framework for prioritizing future refugia, based on their capacity. This framework can be applied through various modeling approaches and consists of three steps: (1) definition of scope, scale, and resolution; (2) identification and quantification; and (3) prioritization for conservation. Capacity is quantified by multiple indicators, including environmental stability, microclimatic heterogeneity, size, and accessibility of the refugium. Using an integrated, semi-mechanistic modeling technique, we illustrate how this approach can be implemented to identify refugia for the plant diversity of Tasmania, Australia. The highest-capacity climate-change refugia were found primarily in cool, wet, and topographically complex environments, several of which we identify as high priorities for biodiversity conservation and managementThis publication has 39 references indexed in Scilit:
- Refugia: identifying and understanding safe havens for biodiversity under climate changeGlobal Ecology and Biogeography, 2011
- Refugia revisited: individualistic responses of species in space and timeProceedings Of The Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 2009
- Local atmospheric decoupling in complex topography alters climate change impactsInternational Journal of Climatology, 2009
- The coincidence of climatic and species rarity: high risk to small-range species from climate changeBiology Letters, 2008
- Climate Change and the Future of California's Endemic FloraPLOS ONE, 2008
- Could the tree diversity pattern in Europe be generated by postglacial dispersal limitation?Ecology Letters, 2007
- Projected distributions of novel and disappearing climates by 2100 ADProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2007
- Extinction risk from climate changeNature, 2004
- Locating likely glacial forest refugia in Tasmania using palynological and ecological information to test alternative climatic modelsBiological Conservation, 1998
- A 3620-Year Temperature Record from Fitzroya cupressoides Tree Rings in Southern South AmericaScience, 1993