Evaluating the Effectiveness of Brazilian Protected Areas Under Climate Change

Abstract

Climate change can lead to a geographic range shift of species in the future, which might challenge a species to maintain viable populations with lower dispersal abilities over time. Therefore, protecting stable habitats is important for the conservation of these species. Herein, we assess the effectiveness of the Brazilian protected areas to preserve the rare and threatened coral snake Micrurus brasiliensis and explore the occurrence of stable habitat areas through its geographic distribution at the end of 21st century. We used ecological niche modeling to generate the potential distribution of the species in the present, and then projected its distribution to past and future climatic scenarios. We assessed whether Brazilian reserves would encompass suitable habitats in the future and proposed areas in which conservation efforts could be directed based on habitat stability (refugia) over time. Our findings show that the potential distribution of M. brasiliensis have shifted over the time, and there is an expected decrease of more than 60% in the amount of suitable areas in the future. The protected areas will contain climatically less suitable areas in the future. We strongly suggest expanding the existing reserve network as well as the creation of corridors between protected areas, allowing the dispersal of M. brasiliensis, enhancing the opportunities for preserving viable populations in the long term.

Climate change will decrease the range size of snake species under negligible protection in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest hotspot

“…These are values markedly lower than those reported for reptiles, amphibians and bats from Europe 81,82 . The poor performance of Brazilian PAs in protecting a snake species was also evidenced in the Cerrado and Caatinga biomes 24 .…”

“…Thus, there is an emerging need for conservation plans to abandon their traditionally static nature and move toward a more dynamic conservation criterion that takes the climate instability into account 22 . For now, most solutions offered by conservation scientists and practitioners to deal with the effectiveness of conservation units in the future involves the establishment of new PAs harbouring areas with future suitable climate 9,23,24 .…”

“…Versions of these models employ different statistical and computational methods, ranging from simple processes of the construction of bioclimatic rules to complex artificial intelligence techniques 26,27 . Geographical projections of ranges arising from ENMs’ outputs can be overlaid onto a layer of PAs to assess the areas expected to retain suitable climatic conditions for different species 24,28,29 . This evaluation is useful to indicate the areas with maximum match to current climate or to point out new areas of future conservation value 9 , and to evaluate the current and future effectiveness of PAs in harbouring species 10,12,30 .…”

Análisis comparativo de motivos y requerimientos para visitar dos Áreas Naturales Protegidas (ANP) del estado de Chihuahua

“…Otra investigación es la realizada por Ortiz-Lozada (2017) en donde, la problemática de las ANP y las amenazas del aislamiento (ubicación Áreas Naturales Protegidas (ANP) del estado de Chihuahua geográfica) han provocado que se busque como alternativa el nuevo sistema de conservación en forma de zonas protegidas por el sector privado (áreas protegidas de forma privada o PPA) que complementan las ANP existentes. Otras investigaciones se relacionan a la participación de las comunidades y su involucramiento en la protección de las ANP, en donde, se examinan las relaciones entre las identidades y las instituciones, como es el caso de Carrus et al, (2005) en Italia y la investigación en Brasil, que se evalúan los esfuerzos y la eficacia para la protección de las ANP ante el cambio climático (Caten et al, 2017). En Rusia se presentaron los resultados obtenidos de la política establecida sobre el acceso abierto a las ANP y las implicaciones que ha tenido y los efectos directos en la flora y fauna (Fleming y Manning, 2015).…”

Geographical distribution of Stryphnodendron adstringens Mart. Coville (Fabaceae): modeling effects of climate change on past, present and future

“…This niche is then projected in geographical space, allowing estimating species' potential distributions (Colwell and Rangel 2009). ENMS have been widely used to investigate how species will respond to the global climate change in terms of potential dispersal toward future suitable areas, as well as local extinctions in unsuitable areas (Thuiller et al 2005;Caten et al 2017;Lopes et al 2017). However, another approach is project the ENMs into past in order to explore how species behaved in front of different climatic events and how these changes affected their current distribution (Carnaval and Moritz 2008;Terribile et al 2012;Collevatti et al 2013).…”