Planning for resilience: Incorporating scenario and model uncertainty and trade‐offs when prioritizing management of climate refugia

Abstract

Climate change has become the greatest threat to the world's ecosystems. Locating and managing areas that contribute to the survival of key species under climate change is critical for the persistence of ecosystems in the future. Here, we identify ‘Climate Priority’ sites as coral reefs exposed to relatively low levels of climate stress that will be more likely to persist in the future. We present the first analysis of uncertainty in climate change scenarios and models, along with multiple objectives, in a marine spatial planning exercise and offer a comprehensive approach to incorporating uncertainty and trade‐offs in any ecosystem. We first described each site using environmental characteristics that are associated with a higher chance of persistence (larval connectivity, hurricane influence, and acute and chronic temperature conditions in the past and the future). Future temperature increases were assessed using downscaled data under four different climate scenarios (SSP1 2.6, SSP2 4.5, SSP3 7.0 and SSP5 8.5) and 57 model runs. We then prioritized sites for intervention (conservation, improved management or restoration) using robust decision‐making approaches that select sites that will have a benign climate under most climate scenarios and models. The modelling work is novel because it solves two important issues. (1) It considers trade‐offs between multiple planning objectives explicitly through Pareto analyses and (2) It makes use of all the uncertainty around future climate change. Priority intervention sites identified by the model were verified and refined through local stakeholder engagement including assessments of local threats, ecological conditions and government priorities. The workflow is presented for the Insular Caribbean and Florida, and at the national level for Cuba, Jamaica, Dominican Republic and Haiti. Our approach allows managers to consider uncertainty and multiple objectives for climate‐smart spatial management in coral reefs or any ecosystem across the globe.

A metric‐based framework for climate‐smart conservation planning

“…Some conservation studies use outputs from a single model (e.g., Magris et al, 2015; Patrizzi & Dobrovolski, 2018) and a single scenario (e.g., Stralberg et al, 2020), but these designs underestimate the uncertainty inherent in planning for climate change. Thus, unless there are compelling reasons—that is, a particular climate model is known to perform particularly well in the region and there is more certainty about our climate future—we suggest using a model ensemble (e.g., Chollett et al, 2022; Martins et al, 2021; Nadeau et al, 2015; Tegegne et al, 2020) and incorporating multiple emission scenarios (e.g., Araújo et al, 2011; Brito‐Morales et al, 2022; Chollett et al, 2022).…”

“…Our proposed framework identifies and prioritizes the protection of climate refugia. This climate‐smart approach protects areas important to biodiversity today and will still likely be important in the future (e.g., Chollett et al, 2022; Morelli et al, 2020). Although the focus of the framework is on climate refugia, recommendations of using a range of emission scenarios, model ensembles, and appropriate metrics could just as easily be applied to other climate‐smart conservation planning methods.…”

“…Here, we define climate‐smart areas as areas where climate is projected to remain relatively stable or where climate change might pose less of a threat to biodiversity. These areas are considered climate refugia (Chollett et al, 2022; Keppel et al, 2015; Morelli et al, 2016, 2020; Queirós et al, 2021; Rilov et al, 2020).…”

A roadmap to integrating resilience into the practice of coral reef restoration

“…Restoration projects should be located both within and across reefs to accommodate different larval dispersal characteristics of key species of interest (e.g., considering species‐specific reproductive strategies and local oceanographic conditions; Magris et al, 2016) and different environmental regimes leading to variable conditions in local adaptation. When possible, larval connectivity studies overlaid with model predictions on future climate conditions should be used to prioritize sites for restoration based on the movement of coral larvae of known source and sink locations (see Chollett et al, 2022), as have been used to design marine protected area networks (Magris et al, 2016; Schill et al, 2015). For instance, sink reefs (e.g., that receive a large portion of larvae from other areas) in theory may be good candidates for donor coral collection because coral diversity may be higher in these sites.…”

The role of Nature‐based Solutions in disaster resilience in coastal Jamaica: current and potential applications for ‘building back better’

“…• Recent studies by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) show that this should be a priority site for restoration work due to the likelihood of environmental conditions enabling growth in the future (Chollett et al, 2022).…”