What Will Remain? Predicting the Representation in Protected Areas of Suitable Habitat for Endangered Tropical Avifauna in Borneo under a Combined Climate- and Land-Use Change Scenario

Minerva Singh, Jessamine Badcock-Scruton and C. Matilda Collins
Additional contact information
Minerva Singh: The Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, London SW7 1NE, UK
Jessamine Badcock-Scruton: The Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, London SW7 1NE, UK
C. Matilda Collins: The Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, London SW7 1NE, UK

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 5, 1-14

Abstract: The responses of threatened tropical avian species to projected climate change and land-use change are important for evaluating the ability of the existing protected areas to provide habitat to these species under future scenarios in biodiversity hotspots. This study uses Maxent, a species distribution model that employs a maximum entropy machine learning approach to map the spatial distributions of habitats suitable for the International Union for Conservation of Nature threatened birds under present and future climate and land-use change in Borneo. We find that the existing protected areas provide very low coverage of the threatened bird species’ suitable habitat areas (95%CI = 9.3–15.4%). Analysis of habitat suitability projections for 18 species of threatened birds suggests that in 2050, under Special Report on Emissions Scenarios A1B and B1, avian species with currently little suitable habitat may gain area but lose in the proportion of this that is protected. Large-ranged species are likely to lose habitat area and this will inflate the proportion of this remaining in protected areas. The present availability of suitable habitat was the most important determinant of future habitat availability under both the scenarios. Threat level, as measured by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the habitat preferences considered here, Lowland or Lowland–Montane, are poor predictors of the amount of habitat contraction or expansion undergone by the species.

Keywords: biodiversity; climate change; conservation of nature; Maxent; entropy machine learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/5/2792/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/5/2792/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:5:p:2792-:d:510784

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().