Aim
Many conservation efforts now focus on mitigating biodiversity loss due to climate change. While a focus on impacts from mean, longâterm changes in climate is warranted, the vast majority of conservation plans largely ignore another key factor of climate changeâchanges in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather and climate events. A typology of the full range and severity of ecological responses to extreme events would help underpin tracking of their impacts.
Location
Global.
Methods
Here, we review 519 observational studies of ecological responses to extreme events between 1941 and 2015. We include responses from amphibians, birds, fish, invertebrates, mammals, plants and reptiles to cyclones, drought, flood, cold waves and heat waves.
Results
Negative ecological responses were the most commonly reported, accounting for 57% of all documented responses. There were over 100 cases of a >25% population decline and 31 cases of local extirpation. Sixty per cent of the studies in our review observed ecological responses for more than 1Â year, and of the studies that monitored species or ecosystem recovery following exposure to an extreme event, 38% showed species or ecosystems did not recover to preâdisturbance levels.
Main conclusions
Extreme weather and climate events have profound implications for species and ecosystem management. We discuss current conceptual challenges associated with incorporating extreme events into conservation planning efforts, which include how to quantify species sensitivity and adaptive capacity to extreme events, how to account for interactions between extreme events and other stressors, and how to maximize adaptive capacity to more frequent and intense extreme events.