Projecting the Effects of Environmental Change on the Geographic Ranges of Bird, Mammals, and Amphibians: A First Global Analysis

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Accelerated climate change and the destruction of natural habitats through human activities are the two greatest threats to terrestrial biodiversity. These forms of environmental change will impact biodiversity at the local scale, but only with a broad-scale (ideally global) perspective can the potential irreversible loss of biodiversity, and the ecosystem services it provides, be fully evaluated. To date, the conceptual understanding of what makes some regions and species particularly vulnerable to these threats is limited. The goal of this project is to perform first steps toward an integrated understanding of the effects of environmental change on terrestrial vertebrates. To this end, the project will produce a taxonomically complete and analytically rigorous database of the geographic ranges of terrestrial vertebrates, core ecological data for species, and global data on present-day and projected future environmental conditions. The accurate capturing of the current distribution of species is crucial for any impact assessments. Therefore, an important first component of this research will be the evaluation, refinement, and validation of species' geographic ranges. These refined ranges will then be used to evaluate the impact of past environmental change on species risk of extinction as baseline for understanding future risk. The project will subsequently assess the exposure of the global protected area network and of single species' geographic ranges to future environmental change under different socioeconomic scenarios using the United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment projections. The project aims to identify the core geographic, taxonomic, and ecological patterns of the impacts of future climate and land-use change on terrestrial vertebrates. The anticipated results will significantly improve our empirical and conceptual understanding of the effects of environmental change on biodiversity. The project will provide a first baseline assessment of future impacts for thousands of vertebrate species. Furthermore, it will quantify the effect of near-future political decisions (under their associated socioeconomic scenarios) on biodiversity and the resulting type, immediacy, taxonomic and geographic prioritization of conservation research and action. This information will help decision-makers to appreciate the impacts of environmental change on biodiversity. Furthermore, the outcomes may facilitate rigorous, science-based prioritization of global conservation efforts. Other scientists will likely benefit from the methods, principles, and data developed from this research.