Mapping vulnerability and conservation adaptation strategies under climate change

Observations from NASA satellites show that Arctic sea ice is now declining at a rate of 11.5 percent per decade, relative to the 1979 to 2000 average.  Author:
NASA/Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio and adapted for NASA’s Global Climate Change website http://climate.nasa.gov/

Climate change is a topic present in many journals. Here we present an article from the last issue of Nature Climate Change that proposes a mapping work carried out by James E. M. Watson, Takuya Iwamura & Nathalie Butt. The abstract follows.

Identification of spatial gradients in ecosystem vulnerability to global climate change and local stressors is an important step in the formulation and implementation of appropriate countermeasures. Here we build on recent work to map ecoregional exposure to future climate, using an envelope-based gauge of future climate stability—defined as a measure of how similar the future climate of a region will be to the present climate. We incorporate an assessment of each ecoregion’s adaptive capacity, based on spatial analysis of its natural integrity—the proportion of intact natural vegetation—to present a measure of global ecosystem vulnerability. The relationship between intactness (adaptive capacity) and stability (exposure) varies widely across ecoregions, with some of the most vulnerable, according to this measure, located in southern and southeastern Asia, western and central Europe, eastern South America and southern Australia. To ensure the applicability of these findings to conservation, we provide a matrix that highlights the potential implications of this vulnerability assessment for adaptation planning and offers a spatially explicit management guide.

Follow the link below to go to article website: Nature Climate Change 3, 989–994 (2013)

Affiliations:

Global Conservation Program, Wildlife Conservation Society, Bronx, New York 10460, USA
James E. M. Watson

School of Biological Sciences and School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia
James E. M. Watson, Takuya Iwamura & Nathalie Butt
Department of Biology and Department of Environmental Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94035, USA
Takuya Iwamura

Home