Biodiversity Indicators Show Climate Change Will Alter Vegetation in Parks and Protected Areas

Abstract

While multifaceted, a chief aim when designating parks and protected areas is to support the preservation of biological diversity, in part, through representing and conserving the full range of landscape conditions observed throughout a representative area. Parks and protected areas are, however, typically developed using a static interpretation of current biodiversity and landscape conditions. The observed and potential climate change impacts to biodiversity have created a need to also contemplate how parks and protected areas will respond to climate change and how these areas will represent the future range of landscape conditions. To assess change in biodiversity, broad-scale ecosystem information can be sourced from indirect remotely sensed indicators. Quantifying biodiversity through indirect indicators allows characterization of inter-relationships between climate and biodiversity. Such characterizations support the assessment of possible implications of climatic change, as the indicators can be generated using modeled forecasts of future climatic conditions. In this paper we model and map impacts of climate change on British Columbia’s parks and protected areas by quantifying change in a number of remotely sensed indicators of biodiversity. These indicators are based on the measured amount of incoming solar energy used by vegetation and map the overall annual energy utilization, variability (seasonality), and latent or baseline energy. We compare current conditions represented by parks and protected areas, to those forecasted in the year 2065. Our results indicate that parks and protected areas are forecasted to become more productive and less seasonal, due to increased vegetation productivity in higher elevation environments. While increased vegetation productivity may be beneficial for biodiversity overall, these changes will be particularly problematic for sensitive and specialist species. Future gaps in vegetation conditions protected by parks and protected areas are observed in the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains and the central interior region of British Columbia. Protected areas along the Coast Mountains, Vancouver Island highlands, and the Rocky Mountains show the greatest levels of change in the biodiversity indicators, including decreasing seasonality, with the Mountain Hemlock ecozone most at risk. Examples of large parks that are predicted to experience rapid change in vegetation characteristics include Strathcona, Garabaldi, and Kitlope. Our maps of future spatial distributions of indirect biodiversity indicators fill a gap in information products available for adaptive parks management and provide an opportunity for dialogue and further research on the use of future scenarios of landscape conditions in conservation planning

Predicting Climate Change Impacts to the Canadian Boreal Forest

“…Similar trends have been predicted for other regions of Canada [39]. The amount of change will vary spatially and increase through time with more extreme climate scenarios (Figures 3-5).…”

“…Though, minimum annual cover model performance was highly variable and as low as 0.1. High variability in predictive success of minimum annual cover may be related to low variance, as minimum annual cover could be low for several different environments [39]. For example, minimum annual cover will be low in deciduous forests as well as grasslands.…”

“…Through integration with historical climate data, temporal archives of vegetation productivity provide an opportunity to quantify past trends between climate and productivity, and indirectly biodiversity [39]. Modelled relationships between historical climate and productivity data can be integrated with future climate scenarios to map possible future spatial distributions of vegetation productivity.…”

Protected areas in boreal Canada: a baseline and considerations for the continued development of a representative and effective reserve network

“…In a study by Holmes et al (2013), climate data were used to make projections of future vegetation productivity, which can be used as a biodiversity surrogate (see Coops et al 2008). The modeling implemented allowed for pixel-based projections of expected productivity conditions in year 2065 as related to climate projections.…”

“…The authors found that, given the modeling implemented, the specific characteristics under protection change with climate given the modeling implemented, with implications especially of note for sensitive or specialist species, and over-all conditions are predicted to be more productive and less seasonal. As modeled projections, the maps such as those developed by Holmes et al (2013) are not to be taken as reality (i.e., as an absolute value), but to provide spatial and categorical insight of potential trends to aid in scenario development and planning exercises.…”