Global Climate Change and the Production of Pequi Fruits (Caryocar brasiliense) in the Brazilian Cerrado

Abstract

Several recent studies have predicted decreased environmental suitability for species in future scenarios of climate change, which will affect the economy of many municipalities. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of global climate change on environmental suitability for "Pequi" tree (Caryocar brasiliense; an economically important Cerrado fruit tree) and investigate the relationship between environmental suitability (according to an ecological niche model -ENM) and production of "Pequi" fruit in Brazilian cities. For the ENM, we used 312 occurrence points of "Pequi" tree and nine climatic variables to model current distribution and project it into future scenarios (scenario A2a for CCCma AOGCM). "Pequi" production averaged 30.89 kg/km 2 , and the Gross Internal Product at municipal level and "Pequi" production were negatively but marginally correlated (r = -0.16; P = 0.05 using Dutilleul's correction for spatial autocorrelation), suggesting that poor municipalities tend to have more use of this natural resource. Future scenarios showed large losses of suitable environments for the species in 2050 in Central Brazil. There is also a significant positive correlation between environmental suitability in current time and "Pequi" production across municipalities (r = 0.382, P = 0.032). Our results suggest that municipality currently using "Pequi" fruit will have lower production in the future, because their regions will be less suitable for "Pequi" tree, which in turn may affect the local economies. Thus, it is necessary that governments develop policies that mitigate adverse impacts, enhance positive impacts, and supports adaptation to climate change, together with enhancing local food security.

Does environmental suitability explain the relative abundance of the tailed tailless bat, Anoura caudifer?

“…Thuiller et al 2010;Jiménez-Valverde 2011), probably due to the complexity of factors that can drive abundance at local scales, other studies have also found such a positive abundance-suitability relationship, although the predictive power is, in general, low (e.g. Pearce & Ferrier 2001;VanDerWal et al 2009;Kulhanek et al 2011;Nabout et al 2011;Tôrres et al 2012). For example, VanDerWal et al (2009) analyzed 69 vertebrate species (birds, amphibians, and reptiles) and the mean amount of variation explained was only 12%.…”

EcoClimate: a database of climate data from multiple models for past, present, and future for macroecologists and biogeographers

“…This suite of methods and ideas has been applied to diverse research purposes: guiding discovery of populations of known (Bourg et al, 2005;Guisan et al, 2006) and unknown (Raxworthy et al, 2003) species; understanding distributional dynamics under past (Banks et al, 2008a;2008b) and future (Dormann, 2007;Anderson, 2013) climates; anticipating climate change impacts on agricultural (Fraga et al, 2013) and natural (Nabout et al, 2011) extraction; mapping invasion risk (Peterson, 2003;Jiménez-Valverde et al, 2011), pest distributions (Venette et al, 2010;Estay et al, 2014), and disease trasmission (Peterson, 2014); estimating population parameters (Tôrres et al, 2012;Lima-Ribeiro and DinizFilho, 2013;Thuiller et al, 2014), species richness (Wisz and Rahbeck, 2007;LimaRibeiro et al, 2013b), and community composition (Pellissier et al, 2012); analyzing biotic interactions (Anderson et al, 2002;Wheeler et al, 2015); illuminating patterns and processes of diversification and speciation (Silva et al, 2014); characterizing dispersal (Génard and Lescourret, 2013;Saltré et al, 2015); highlighting extinction (Nogués-Bravo et al, 2008;Lima-Ribeiro et al, 2013a); testing niche conservatism (Martínez-Meyer et al, 2004;Peterson and Nyári, 2007;Jakob et al, 2010) and phylogeographic hypotheses (Collevatti et al, 2013b;Alvarado-Serrano and Knowles, 2014); establishing historical refugia (Waltari et al, 2007;…”

Effects of global climate changes on geographical distribution patterns of economically important plant species in cerrado

“…In addition, the changes in the distribution of these economic important species suggest the need of adaptation of local populations and all commercial/economic structure related to these species (e.g. NABOUT et al, 2011). However, it is necessary better evaluate the uncertainties generated by bioclimatic models used for any prediction, to give more accuracy to the results and to make them useful for any decision-making.…”

“…On the other hand, this change in composition does not consider that other important species from other regions might move to current geographic region of the Cerrado. Anyway, the main conclusion of this study suggest that species of economic importance in the Cerrado will displace their distributions, implying potential social-economic changes in pattern of their use, therefore requiring an adaptation of human population regarding the use of these resources, especially those involving extractive activities (see NABOUT et al, 2011).…”