Conservation in the Context of Climate Change: Practical Guidelines for Land Protection at Local Scales

Abstract

Climate change will affect the composition of plant and animal communities in many habitats and geographic settings. This presents a dilemma for conservation programs – will the portfolio of protected lands we now have achieve a goal of conserving biodiversity in the future when the ecological communities occurring within them change? Climate change will significantly alter many plant communities, but the geophysical underpinnings of these landscapes, such as landform, elevation, soil, and geological properties, will largely remain the same. Studies show that extant landscapes with a diversity of geophysical characteristics support diverse plant and animal communities. Therefore, geophysically diverse landscapes will likely support diverse species assemblages in the future, although which species and communities will be present is not altogether clear. Following protocols advanced in studies spanning large regions, we developed a down-scaled, high spatial resolution measure of geophysical complexity based on Ecological Land Units (ELUs) and examined the relationship between plant species richness, ecological community richness, and ELU richness (number of different ELU types). We found that extant landscapes with high ELU richness had a greater variety of ecological community types and high species richness of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants. We developed a spatial representation of diverse ELU landscapes to inform local conservation practitioners, such as land trusts, of potential conservation targets that will likely support diverse faunas and floras despite the impact of climate change.

Fine‐ and coarse‐filter conservation strategies in a time of climate change

“…In some parts of the world, certain combinations of soils and topography, such as serpentine soils or limestone karst outcrops, are widely recognized for their unique contributions to current biodiversity, but global conservation priorities are not generally based on land facets. This is despite the fact that land facet diversity appears to be strongly correlated with species diversity, and thus may be particularly effective in areas where species distributions are poorly known, particularly aquatic environments . In one application of land facets, Brost and Beier found that corridor linkages determined by land facets provided as much or more connectivity for a suite of focal species as a consensus corridor plan based on the species themselves.…”

Coupling high-resolution satellite imagery with ALS-based canopy height model and digital elevation model in object-based boreal forest habitat type classification

“…For instance, areas which have high geodiversity have a high conservation value (see e.g. Anderson and Ferree 2010, Beier and Brost 2010, Ruddock et al 2013. Third, species richness and other factors that contribute to conservation values have connections.…”

“…In a changing climate, it has been argued that areas with the elements to provide high biodiversity in the future should be targeted (Anderson and Ferree 2010, Beier and Brost 2010, Ruddock et al 2013. The same could also be applied to other constituents of conservation value.…”

“…Recently, species richness has partly been explained in terms of geodiversity (Parks and Mulligan 2010, Anderson and Ferree 2010, Hjort et al 2012, Ruddock et al 2013, which can be defined as the variability of the Earth's surface materials, forms and physical processes (Gray 2013). Because geodiversity explains species richness and because it is more constant, as opposed to a perennially changing climate, it has been argued that areas to be conserved could be selected on the basis of geodiversity (Anderson and Ferree 2010, Beier and Brost 2010, Ruddock et al 2013.…”

“…Because geodiversity explains species richness and because it is more constant, as opposed to a perennially changing climate, it has been argued that areas to be conserved could be selected on the basis of geodiversity (Anderson and Ferree 2010, Beier and Brost 2010, Ruddock et al 2013. Furthermore, it has been found that geodiversity and habitat diversity are positively connected (Ja ková and Romportl 2008).…”