Will the emblematic southern conifer Araucaria angustifolia survive to climate change in Brazil?

Disrupting a socioecological system: how Traditional Ecological Knowledge could be the key to preserve Araucaria Forest in Brazil under climate change?

“…To estimate the potential losses due to climate change over the Araucaria Forest System we selected the latest peer-reviewed studies that have shown the impacts of future climate change over araucaria forest (Table 1). We combined the studies' projections for 2070 (Castro et al 2019;Wilson et al 2019;Marchioro et al 2020;Tagliari et al 2021b) over the potential losses of climatically suitable areas ( ) for Araucaria in the future under two climate scenarios -Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 -to propose a baseline of "climate change loss". These three studies selected both RCPs 4.5 and 8.5 because it became a common practice of species modelling approaches once they represent an optimistic (RCP 4.5) or a pessimistic (RCP 8.5) CO 2 emission scenario (Riahi et al 2011;Thomson et al 2011).…”

“…We advocate that the current use and knowledge of araucaria ethnovarieties still shape and maintain this ecosystem productive and preserved under a landscape domestication perspective (Reis et al 2018), where management practices, the species demographic structure, and its genetic diversity reinforce this concept (Reis et al 2018). Assuming that climate change might drastically reduce araucaria distribution until 2070 (Castro et al 2019;Wilson et al 2019;Marchioro et al 2020), we might expect that this effect would ruin critical ecological interactions, as well collapsing the actual human-plant interaction.…”

“…However, chronic deforestation, agriculture expansion, and more recently, climate change (Orellana and Vanclay 2018;Castro et al 2019;Wilson et al 2019;Marchioro et al 2020), have been dampening araucaria conservation and the SES resilience. To halt biodiversity losses the creation of protected areas is a cornerstone strategy (Geldmann et al 2013).…”

“…To halt biodiversity losses the creation of protected areas is a cornerstone strategy (Geldmann et al 2013). The Araucaria Forest remnants, although, are still poorly encompassed by the existing protected area network, as recent studies showed that less than 10% of the species' projected distribution falls within an existing protected area rather in the present or under future climate change scenarios (Castro et al 2019;Wilson et al 2019;Marchioro et al 2020;Tagliari et al 2021b). From almost 1500 BP until late 19 th century, Araucaria Forest's natural extent covered an estimated area of 200 000 km² spanning over Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay (Nodari 2016).…”

“…Due to deforestation no more than 30% of native remnants remain preserved (Rezende et al 2018). Moreover, future climate change predictions indicated losses of climatically suitable areas ranging from 60% to 96.5% compared to the species' current distribution (Castro et al 2019;Wilson et al 2019;Marchioro et al 2020).…”