Predicted climate shifts within terrestrial protected areas worldwide

Samuel Hoffmann (), Severin D. H. Irl and Carl Beierkuhnlein
Additional contact information
Samuel Hoffmann: University of Bayreuth
Severin D. H. Irl: University of Bayreuth
Carl Beierkuhnlein: University of Bayreuth

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Protected areas (PA) are refugia of biodiversity. However, anthropogenic climate change induces a redistribution of life on Earth that affects the effectiveness of PAs. When species are forced to migrate from protected to unprotected areas to track suitable climate, they often face degraded habitats in human-dominated landscapes and a higher extinction threat. Here, we assess how climate conditions are expected to shift within the world’s terrestrial PAs (n = 137,432). PAs in the temperate and northern high-latitude biomes are predicted to obtain especially high area proportions of climate conditions that are novel within the PA network at the local, regional and global scale by the end of this century. These PAs are predominantly small, at low elevation, with low environmental heterogeneity, high human pressure, and low biotic uniqueness. Our results guide adaptation measures towards PAs that are strongly affected by climate change, and of low adaption capacity and high conservation value.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12603-w Abstract (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:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-12603-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-12603-w

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().