julian r - biodiversity conservation in an era of change
DESCRIPTION
Presentation made during the last workshop on The Wallace Initiative, in Tyndall Centre, The University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.TRANSCRIPT
The Wallace Initiative:
Biodiversity conservation in an era of change
Julián Ramírez and Andy JarvisInternational Centre for Tropical Agriculture, CIAT
Challenge Program on Climate Change and Food Security
The Wallace Initiative framework:
1. Assessment of impacts of climate change on species distributions to:
– Determine refugia– Improve knowledge of risks of exceeding certain
levels of change by means of determining extinction rates
2. Map potential corridors for species3. Potential refugia, carbon dist., and design of
REDD mechanisms4. Driving of protected area design in the 21st
century5. Provide critical conclusions to aid the
development of adaptation plans
1. Impact of climate change on species distributions
Data: GBIF inputs• Using 62,000 terrestrial plant taxa
– Local version of the GBIF database– Selecting species with at least 10 unique data
points– 67,039 species (15,215,524 occurrences)– Correcting georreferences
• Is the record in land or sea?• Is in the country/department/locality it says it is?• Is within the environmental niche of the species?
– 62,000 selected species (12 million occurrences)– Run for all these species
Assessing the GBIF database
• 44’706.505 plant records
• 33’340.008 (74,57%) with coordinates
• From those– 88.5% are geographically correct at two levels– 6.8% have null or incorrect country (incl. sea
plant species)– 4.7% are near the coasts but not in-land
Good records: 88.47% of total
Resulting Database
An example from GPG2
IRRI COLLECTION
BEFOREAFTER
ADDING VALUE TO THE DATASET
Courtesy R. Hijmans & Jacob van Etten
Plus… automated georreferencing
Real locationAt <12km uncertainty
The data: current and future climates
• Current climates from WorldClim– 19 bioclimatic indices
• Future climates from downscaled GCM outputs (via ClimGen)– 7 GCMs at 0.5 degree resolution– 2020s, 2050s, 2080s– SRES-A1B emission scenario– Same 19 bioclimatic indices– Now running, and awaiting results…
The modeling approach• Maximum entropy as a very accurate niche modeling
technique• 10 or more points for each of the 62,000 taxa• 21 future projections (7 GCMs x 3 timeslices… but will project
over other SRES, RCP and AVOID scenarios)• Current: two extreme ‘adaptation’ scenarios
– Full adaptation– Null adaptation
• Measures of diversity (sp. richness) and area loss– Per country, region and globally
• Within Protected Areas• Overall
• Current extent of conserved biodiversity within protected areas (in situ gap analysis)
• How to make climate-smart conservation plans?
Modeling approach
• Aplying the maximum entropy algorithm– Macoubea guianensis Aubl.: food for rural indigenous
communities in the Amazon
Data harvesting from GBIF Building the presence model Projecting on future climates
NULL MIGRATION
UNLIMITEDMIGRATION
Potential habitatexpansion
NO ADAPTATION FULL ADAPTATION
MaxEnt models performance
• Logistic deviation measures the difference between a perfect logistic fit (Ln 1 = 0) y the model’s fit (Ln p)
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
0.00
0.12
0.35
0.70
1.16
1.74
2.44
3.25
4.18
5.23
6.39
7.67
9.06
10.5
812
.20
13.9
415
.80
17.7
819
.87
22.0
824
.40
26.8
429
.40
32.0
734
.86
37.7
640
.78
43.9
247
.18
50.5
454
.03
57.6
361
.35
65.1
969
.14
73.2
077
.39
81.6
886
.10
90.6
395
.28
100.
0410
4.92
109.
9211
5.03
120.
2612
5.60
131.
0713
6.64
1000
.0
Logistic deviation of test data
Per
cen
t o
f sp
ecie
s (%
)
P LogDev Performance0.1 4.61 Very poor model performance0.2 3.22 Poor model performance0.3 2.41 Poor model performance0.4 1.83 Marginal model performance0.5 1.39 Marginal model performance0.6 1.02 Good model performance0.7 0.71 Good model performance0.8 0.45 Very good model performance0.9 0.21 Very good model performance1.0 0.00 Perfect model performance
Comparing with other studies on plant diversity
Results: in situ gap analysis
• Covering 13.8% of the total global surface (3.8% international, 10% national)
• Holding a great amount of biodiversity
Results: protected areas per region
0
1000
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4000
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6000
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000
Maximum hotspot overall
Ma
xim
um
ho
tsp
ot
wit
hin
PA
s Complete representativeness
Average representativeness
UK
World
Mexico
US
South AfricaNorth Africa
Middle eastSaudi Arabia
West Africa
BrazilCurrent extent of in situ conservation
Some issues in highly diverse areas… Global biodiversity currently well conserved
Results: Current species richness
• Important hotspots in Latin America, Australasia and Central Africa well represented… but still missing something
CURRENT
PERCENT CHANGE [null adaptation]
SD among GCMs
PERCENT CHANGE [null adaptation]
SD among GCMs
BETTER CHANCES BUTGREATER UNCERTAINTIES
Results: changes within AVOID regions
• Changes in species richness under both migration scenarios
-1000
-800
-600
-400
-200
0
200
400
Ru
ssia
Sa
ud
i Ara
bia
Re
st o
f Ce
ntr
al A
sia
Ind
on
esi
a
Ch
ina
Ca
na
da
Mid
dle
Ea
st
No
rth
Afr
ica
Jap
an
Ind
ia
Re
st o
f So
uth
Asi
a
So
uth
Afr
ica
Re
st o
f Ea
st A
sia
Po
lan
d
Wo
rld
We
st A
fric
a
So
uth
ern
an
d E
ast
Afr
ica
US
Au
stra
lia
Eu
rop
e
So
uth
Ko
rea
Re
st o
f Au
stra
lasi
a
So
uth
Am
eri
ca
Me
xico
Italy
Bra
zil
Ca
rib
be
an
Ge
rma
ny
UK
Ce
ntr
al A
me
rica
Fra
nce
Null migration
Unlimited migration
Results: in situ conservation under the context of CC
• No matter if the best ‘adaptation’ scenario (unlimited dispersal) is chosen, negatives are expected in most regions
• There are regions with gains in species richness, but fairly due to displacement of niches
-800
-600
-400
-200
0
200
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Percent of area with loss within PAs [UM]
Ch
an
ge
in s
pe
cie
s r
ich
ne
ss
wit
hin
P
As
[U
M]
Caribbean
Central America
France
Germany
Australia
ItalyMexico
South AmericaEurope West Africa
South KoreaBrazilMiddle EastUS
Results: in situ conservation under the context of CC
• Expected changes within protected areas (PAs) sometimes occur at a greater extent
• Current gaps in in situ conservation to be larger in changing climates
• Current protected areas to be strengthened, expanded, or re-located if necessary
-1000
-800
-600
-400
-200
0
-1000 -800 -600 -400 -200 0
Change in species richness [NM]
Ch
ang
e in
sp
ecie
s ri
chn
ess
wit
hin
Pas
[N
M]
South America
Central America
France
Australasia
Germany
CaribbeanBrazil
US
Globe
-800
-600
-400
-200
0
200
400
-800 -600 -400 -200 0 200 400
Change in species richness [NM]
Ch
ang
e in
sp
ecie
s ri
chn
ess
wit
hin
Pas
[N
M]
France
Central America
Germany Caribbean
South Korea
NULL MIGRATION
UNLIMITED MIGRATION
How to make climate-smart conservation plans?
• Climate vulnerability
CURRENT 2050s %Change
Assessing threat level
• Anthropogenic activities threat ecosystems… and therefore, species
Recent Land Use Change
Oil/Gas extraction
Infrastructure development
Grazing pressure
Conversion to Agriculture
Accessibility
Landscape fragmentation and deforestation effect on biodiversity
• De 12,853,796 poblaciones (60,894 spp)– 315,590 pob. (2.5%) de 13,250 especies
(21.76%) estan en el Amazonas• Al menos una pob. de 1,662 especies (12.5%)
esta extinta debido a cambios en UT• 3.9% especies tienen mas de 5% de sus
poblaciones ahora extintas• 1.3% tienen mas de 10% y… 0.4% tinen mas que
20%
79.7%
18.0%
2.3%
Taxa outside the Amazon Taxa in degraded lands
Taxa outside degraded lands
From 2004 to mid-2009 [5.5 yrs]… Almost 2.5% of the Amazon’s biodiversity (the part we know) is under severe threat from LUC
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2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Año
To
tal a
cu
mu
lad
o
Poblaciones
Especies
Current threat to ecosystems
A half-day discussion after
Climate-stable refugia: Protected areas
Climate-stable refugia:
Restoration
A half-day discussion after
Corridors through agriculture to enable movement of biodiversity
No future for biodiversity: Production
A half-day discussion after
• Conservation is a matter of the the number of species and uniqueness
• Indigenous areas act as strong barriers to threats• Anthropogenic activities difficult conservation• Despite the strong threat from CC, there are areas
likely to remain stable• Conservation should be the focus in “climatically
stable” areas and under mid to low threat level• Restoration should focus in highly fragmented
landscapes with mid to high climate vulnerability• Adapting biodiversity needs to consider crop
suitability shifts as well
In situ conclusions
• Protected areas function today, at least on paper• Under a changed climate however, they do not
effectively conserve biodiversity, even assuming maximum adaptation
• In situ conservation needs to be oriented under the context of climate change– Areas to be strengthened (more control)– Areas to be expanded– Areas to be re-located (if migration does occur)
• Enabling migration is critical: corridors between protected areas
• Redesigned functional landscapes also essential: Eco-efficient agriculture
Next steps on methods
• Some thoughts– Assessing uncertainties– Other SRES, AVOID and finally RCP
scenarios– Mammals, Reptiles, Aves (?), Amphibians– Intermediate migration scenarios… how to
assess species natural migrations?– “Acceptable” and expected extinction risks?
Next steps… analysis of policy implications
• Similarities/dissimilarities between regions– Do current criteria for PA selection stand up to climate
change?– What makes one protected area system more
effective than another in combating climate change? – What needs to be changed?
• Do we need a new conservation paradigm? More efficient systems? Or more coverage?
• Agricultural biodiversity needs to be assessed as well
• Timber species, forests… ecosystem-level analyses required