Assessing the impacts of projected climate change on biodiversity in the protected areas of western North America
Assessing the impacts of projected climate change on biodiversity in the protected areas of western North America
复制标题
评估预计气候变化对北美西部保护区生物多样性的影响
DOI：
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发表时间：
2015
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
J. Lawler
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
J. R. Langdon;J. Lawler
保护区是许多保护战略的基本组成部分。它们保护着许多地区一些未破碎的自然景观的最佳范例，为稀有和受威胁物种提供了重要的栖息地，并成为远离人类主宰世界的避难所。随着气候的持续变化，物种分布、生态群落和生态系统将发生变化。了解这些变化的趋势可以让保护区管理者制定更有效的气候适应战略。在这里，我们通过计算三个指标来量化整个保护区网络中预计的潜在气候驱动的生态变化的相对量。我们评估了北美太平洋西北地区保护区未来温度和降水的预计变化、主要植被类型的变化以及脊椎动物物种更替。一般来说，这三个指标的预计变化程度遵循从太平洋沿岸内陆到大陆内部的纵向梯度。预计变化最小的保护区位于海岸附近和整个沿海山脉的低海拔地区，而预计变化最大的地区位于落基山脉和大盆地地区的较高海拔地区。这些影响措施所产生的空间变化强调了制定适当的、针对特定地点的气候适应战略以应对未来环境变化的不同趋势的重要性。
Protected areas are a fundamental component of many conservation strategies. They safeguard some of the best examples of unfragmented natural landscapes in many regions, provide important habitat for rare and threatened species, and serve as a refuge from a human-dominated world. As climates continue to change, species distributions, ecological communities, and ecosystems will be altered. An understanding of the trends in these changes can allow protected area managers to develop more effective climate-adaptation strategies. Here, we quantify the relative amount of projected potential climate-driven ecological change across a protected area network by calculating three metrics. We assessed future projected changes in temperature and precipitation, shifts in major vegetation types, and vertebrate species turnover for the protected areas of the Pacific Northwestern region of North America. In general, the degree of projected change in the three metrics followed a longitudinal gradient from the Pacific coast inland toward the continental interior. Protected areas expected to experience the least change are at low elevations near the coast and throughout the Coastal Mountains, whereas areas expected to experience the most change are found at higher elevations in the Rocky Mountains and Great Basin regions. The resulting spatial variation in these impact measures underscores the importance of developing appropriate, location-specific, climate-adaptation strategies in response to disparate trends in future environmental change.