Biodiversity gains and losses: Evidence for homogenisation of Scottish alpine vegetation

Alpine areas are important biodiversity reservoirs, but are subject to anthropogenic drivers including climate change, nitrogen deposition and changing land use. Alpine vegetation has been proposed as an indicator of climate change impacts, but this requires long-term data since these communities have high inertia. Most studies have focussed on climate impacts in open, high-alpine summit communities; we investigated responses of closed low- and middle-alpine communities to multiple drivers. Scottish alpine vegetation data collected 1963-1987 was used as a baseline to assess biodiversity change across a range of habitats and a wide geographic spread. Change was assessed over a 20-40 years period using a variety of metrics including α- and β-diversity indices and biodiversity changes were contrasted between habitats and areas. We also examined changes in key species′ distribution and cover. Species richness increased in most habitats, while diversity at the plot scale and β-diversity declined, resulting in increased homogeneity of vegetation. This occurred in closed alpine communities over a 20-40 years period, implying that these communities are considerably more dynamic than previously thought. Key northern and alpine species declined while lowland generalist species increased. This change was consistent with predicted impacts of climate change, but other elements of spatial pattern (decline in lichen richness in high deposition areas) were consistent with effects of nitrogen pollution. Assessment of biodiversity change differed according to the metrics used and we argue that biodiversity targets for conservation management need accurate definition and that multiple measures of biodiversity are required to accurately assess long-term change.     

Assisted colonization: Integrating conservation strategies in the face of climate change

Global climate change poses an immense challenge for conservation biologists seeking to mitigate impacts to species and ecosystems. Species persistence will depend on geographic range shifts or adaptation in response to warming patterns as novel climates and community assemblages arise. Assisted colonization has been proposed as a method for addressing these challenges. This technique, which consists of transporting species to a new range that is predicted to be favorable for persistence under future climate scenarios, has become the subject of controversy and discussion in the conservation community due to its highly manipulative nature, questions about widespread feasibility, and uncertainty associated with the likelihood of translocated species becoming invasive. We reviewed the discussion and criticism associated with assisted colonization and sought to identify other conservation techniques that also display potential to promote the colonization and adaptation of species in response to climate change. We propose an integrated conservation strategy that includes management for habitat connectivity, conservation genetics, and when necessary, assisted colonization of species that are still unable to shift their ranges even given implementation of the above standard conservation approaches. We argue that this integrated approach will facilitate persistence for a larger proportion of species than is possible by solely using assisted colonization. Furthermore, a multi-faceted approach will likely reduce the uncertainty of conservation outcomes and will become increasingly necessary for conservation of biodiversity in a changing climate.     

Biodiversity management in the face of climate change: A review of 22 years of recommendations

Climate change creates new challenges for biodiversity conservation. Species ranges and ecological dynamics are already responding to recent climate shifts, and current reserves will not continue to support all species they were designed to protect. These problems are exacerbated by other global changes. Scholarly articles recommending measures to adapt conservation to climate change have proliferated over the last 22 years. We systematically reviewed this literature to explore what potential solutions it has identified and what consensus and direction it provides to cope with climate change. Several consistent recommendations emerge for action at diverse spatial scales, requiring leadership by diverse actors. Broadly, adaptation requires improved regional institutional coordination, expanded spatial and temporal perspective, incorporation of climate change scenarios into all planning and action, and greater effort to address multiple threats and global change drivers simultaneously in ways that are responsive to and inclusive of human communities. However, in the case of many recommendations the how, by whom, and under what conditions they can be implemented is not specified. We synthesize recommendations with respect to three likely conservation pathways: regional planning; site-scale management; and modification of existing conservation plans. We identify major gaps, including the need for (1) more specific, operational examples of adaptation principles that are consistent with unavoidable uncertainty about the future; (2) a practical adaptation planning process to guide selection and integration of recommendations into existing policies and programs; and (3) greater integration of social science into an endeavor that, although dominated by ecology, increasingly recommends extension beyond reserves and into human-occupied landscapes.     

Regional climate change adaptation strategies for biodiversity conservation in a midcontinental region of North America

Scenario planning should be an effective tool for developing responses to climate change but will depend on ecological assessments of broad enough scope to support decision-making. Using climate projections from an ensemble of 16 models, we conducted an assessment of a midcontinental area of North America (Minnesota) based on a resistance, resilience, and facilitation framework. We assessed likely impacts and proposed options for eight landscape regions within the planning area. Climate change projections suggest that by 2069, average annual temperatures will increase 3 °C with a slight increase in precipitation (6%). Analogous climate locales currently prevail 400–500 km SSW. Although the effects of climate change may be resisted through intensive management of invasive species, herbivores, and disturbance regimes, conservation practices need to shift to facilitation and resilience. Key resilience actions include providing buffers for small reserves, expanding reserves that lack adequate environmental heterogeneity, prioritizing protection of likely climate refuges, and managing forests for multi-species and multi-aged stands. Modifying restoration practices to rely on seeding (not plants), enlarge seed zones, and include common species from nearby southerly or drier locales is a logical low-risk facilitation strategy. Monitoring “trailing edge” populations of rare species should be a high conservation priority to support decision-making related to assisted colonization. Ecological assessments that consider resistance, resilience, and facilitation actions during scenario planning is a productive first step towards effective climate change planning for biodiversity with broad applicability to many regions of the world.     

General management principles and a checklist of strategies to guide forest biodiversity conservation

Many indicators and criteria have been proposed to assess the sustainable management of forests but their scientific validity remains uncertain. Because the effects of forest disturbances (such as logging) are often specific to particular species, sites, landscapes, regions and forest types, management “shortcuts” such as indicator species, focal species and threshold levels of vegetation cover may be of limited generic value. We propose an alternative approach based on a set of five guiding principles for biodiversity conservation that are broadly applicable to any forested area: (1) the maintenance of connectivity; (2) the maintenance of landscape heterogeneity; (3) the maintenance of stand structural complexity; and (4) the maintenance of aquatic ecosystem integrity; (5) the use of natural disturbance regimes to guide human disturbance regimes.We present a checklist of measures for forest biodiversity conservation that reflects the multi-scaled nature of conservation approaches on forested land. At the regional scale, management should ensure the establishment of large ecological reserves. At the landscape scale, off-reserve conservation measures should include: (1) protected areas within production forests; (2) buffers for aquatic ecosystems; (3) appropriately designed and located road networks; (4) the careful spatial and temporal arrangement of harvest units; and (5) appropriate fire management practices. At the stand level, off-reserve conservation measures should include: (1) the retention of key elements of stand structural complexity (e.g., large living and dead trees with hollows, understorey thickets, and large fallen logs); (2) long rotation times (coupled with structural retention at harvest); (3) silvicultural systems alternative to traditional high impact ones (e.g., clearcutting in some forest types); and (4) appropriate fire management practices and practices for the management of other kinds of disturbances.Although the general ecological principles and associated checklist are intuitive, data to evaluate the effectiveness of many specific on-the-ground management actions are limited. Considerable effort is needed to adopt adaptive management “natural experiments” and monitoring to: (1) better identify the impacts of logging operations and other kinds of management activities on biodiversity, and; (2) quantify the effectiveness of impact mitigation strategies; and (3) identify ways to improve management practices.     

气候变化与中国农业的持续发展

全球气候变化引起地球表面的云系、温度和降水等气候格局的重大变化，直接影响到我国农业生产的发展。而对于不同区域的影响程度的差异及变暖变干的程度与农业生产的关系更为密切。本文根据大量研究结果的分析，提出了适应气候变化的农业持续发展战略，包括建立稳定的农业生态系统、保护生态环境和生物多样性，发挥森林的屏障作用、农业气候敏感区的防御措施等。     

Challenges and a checklist for biodiversity conservation in fire-prone forests: Perspectives from the Pacific Northwest of USA and Southeastern Australia

Conserving biodiversity in fire-prone forest ecosystems is challenging for several reasons including differing and incomplete conceptual models of fire-related ecological processes, major gaps in ecological and management knowledge, high variability in fire behavior and ecological responses to fires, altered fire regimes as a result of land-use history and climate change, and the increasing encroachment into forest landscapes by humans. We briefly compare two ecologically distinct fire-prone forest regions, the Pacific Northwest, USA and southeastern Australia with the goal of finding ecological conservation generalities that transcend regional differences as well as differences in scientific concepts and management. We identify the major conceptual scientific and conservation challenges and then present a checklist of questions that need to be answered to implement place-based approaches to conserving biodiversity in fire-prone forest ecosystems. The two regions exhibit both similarities and differences in how biodiversity conservation is conceptualized and applied. Important research and management challenges include: understanding fire-prone systems as coupled natural-human systems, using the disturbance regime concept in multiple ways, dealing with large fire events, using language about the effects of fire with more precision, and researching and monitoring fire and biodiversity at multiple spatial scales. Despite the weaknesses of present conceptual models, it is possible to develop a checklist of principles or questions that can be used to guide management and conservation at local scales across systems. Our list includes: establishing the socio-economic context of fire management, identifying disturbance regimes that will meet conservation goals, moving beyond fuel treatments as a goal, basing management goals on vital attributes of species, and planning for large events including post-fire responses.     

Protected areas in climate space: What will the future bring?

Protected areas for conservation are intended to contain the environmental conditions that enable species and ecosystems to persist. The locations of such areas are fixed, but the environment within them may change, especially with climate change. To illustrate how multiple climate factors may change in relation to protection status, we used Principal Components Analysis to construct a climate space for California based on eight climate variables assessed at an 800-m resolution. We used projections of future climate derived from a downscaled regional climate model in conjunction with the IPCC SRES A2 scenario to assess how the climate space might shift under future conditions and to identify the combinations of conditions that may no longer occur in the state (disappearing climates) or that will be new to the state (novel climates). Disappearing climates, which were generally toward cooler and/or wetter extremes of the climate space, represented only 0.5% of California’s land area but occurred disproportionately more often in conservation areas that were fully protected. Novel climates (5.8% of California) also occurred disproportionately in fully protected areas; in most cases these climates were characterized by hotter and drier combinations with more seasonal precipitation. The disproportionate occurrence of both novel and disappearing future climates in currently protected areas may create challenges to conservation of the status quo, but such areas may also be “hotspots of opportunity” for responding to the extremes of climate change.     

气候变化对畜牧业生产的影响

人类活动将导致气候变化，从而给畜牧业生产带来影响。文中从三个方面综述并分析了气候变化对畜牧业的影响：１）气候变化对草地生态系统和草地面积的影响；２）气候变化包括大气中ＣＯ２含量增加、温度和降水的变化对草地生产力和牲畜负载力的影响；３）气候变化对家畜健康、生长和繁殖的影响。     

Implications of climate change for tillage practice in Australia

The world is experiencing climate change that in no way can be considered normal, and the challenge that this brings to agriculture is twofold. The first challenge relates to the continuing need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that generate the changes to climate. Australia's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory estimates that agriculture produces about one-quarter of Australia's total greenhouse gas emissions (including land clearing). The main gases emitted are carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. These gases are derived from high-value components within the agricultural production base, so reducing emissions of greenhouse gases from agriculture has the potential to provide production and financial benefits, as well as greenhouse gas reduction. Methane essentially derives from enteric fermentation in ruminants. Nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide, on the other hand, are strongly influenced, and perhaps even determined by a range of variable soil-based parameters, of which the main ones are moisture, aerobiosis, temperature, amount and form of carbon, organic and inorganic nitrogen, pH, and cation exchange capacity. Tillage has the potential to influence most of these parameters, and hence may be one of the most effective mechanisms to influence rates of emissions of greenhouse gases from Australian agriculture. There have been substantial changes in tillage practice in Australia over the past few decades – with moves away from aggressive tillage techniques to a fewer number of passes using conservative practices. The implications of these changes in tillage for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases from Australian agriculture are discussed.

The second challenge of climate change for Australian agriculture relates to the impacts of climate change on production, and the capacity of agriculture to adapt where it is most vulnerable. Already agriculture is exposed to climate change, and this exposure will be accentuated over the coming decades. The most recent projections for Australia provided by the CSIRO through the Australian Climate Change Science Programme, indicate that southern Australia can expect a trend to drying due to increased temperatures, reduced rainfalls, and increased evaporative potentials. Extremes in weather events are likely also to become more common. We anticipate that climate change will become an additional driver for continued change in tillage practice across Australia, as land managers respond to the impacts of climate change on their production base, and governments undertake a range of activities to address both emissions reduction and the impacts of climate change in agriculture and land management.     

Conservation in the face of climate change: The roles of alternative models, monitoring, and adaptation in confronting and reducing uncertainty

The broad physical and biological principles behind climate change and its potential large scale ecological impacts on biota are fairly well understood, although likely responses of biotic communities at fine spatio-temporal scales are not, limiting the ability of conservation programs to respond effectively to climate change outside the range of human experience. Much of the climate debate has focused on attempts to resolve key uncertainties in a hypothesis-testing framework. However, conservation decisions cannot await resolution of these scientific issues and instead must proceed in the face of uncertainty. We suggest that conservation should precede in an adaptive management framework, in which decisions are guided by predictions under multiple, plausible hypotheses about climate impacts. Under this plan, monitoring is used to evaluate the response of the system to climate drivers, and management actions (perhaps experimental) are used to confront testable predictions with data, in turn providing feedback for future decision making. We illustrate these principles with the problem of mitigating the effects of climate change on terrestrial bird communities in the southern Appalachian Mountains, USA.     

Assessing the potential impacts of climate change and their conservation implications in Japan: A case study of conifers

The Japanese archipelago is a biodiversity hotspot with a unique regional climate influenced by the Asian monsoon circulation, surrounding seas, and complex topography. Japan has numerous mountains and islands, which are potentially vulnerable to climate change. This study evaluated the potential impact of climate change on species diversity in Japan, using 25 conifer tree species as a case study. We applied ensemble models based on generalised additive models, artificial neural networks, generalised boostedmodels, and random forests to species’ locality records at 1 km² resolution. The results indicated a substantial impact, such that 80% of the species may lose over half of their current climatically suitable areas by 2100. The lower altitudinal range limits were projected to shift upwards by 293 m on average, suggesting that alpine/sub-alpine and sub-boreal species may face widespread local extinctions. The impacts on sub-alpine species may be moderated by assisted migration to the northern island where they currently do not occur. However, climatically suitable areas for these species and sub-boreal species that occur on the island overlapped significantly, indicating that assisted migration may entail the risk of introducing biotic competition or interbreeding. Thus, rugged topography and dispersal barriers between islands are likely to amplify the future impacts of climate change in Japan. Limited areas in the central mountain region were identified as potential bioclimatic refugia, which should be conserved as a priority.     

气候变化影响链的形成机制及其应对

目前气候变化的影响研究多集中在直接影响，间接影响考虑较少。对气候变化影响传递认识的不全面是应对气候变化的盲点之一，探讨气候变化影响链的形成机制对应对气候变化具有重要意义。本研究基于对气候变化影响特征的分析，探讨气候变化影响链的形成机制，界定了气候变化影响链的内涵，明确了气候变化的影响层级，并提出气候变化影响链的应对途径。研究表明，气候变化影响具有广泛性、差异性、持续性、突发性、传递性及可转化性等特征。气候变化及其带来的各种胁迫与干扰作用于受体系统之后，受体系统与其它系统联系，把这种胁迫与干扰传递到其它系统，导致气候变化的影响在时间上和空间上不断延伸，形成复杂的气候变化影响链。气候变化作用于直接受体后，其影响在生态系统中会沿着食物链传递，在经济系统中沿着产业链传递，在社会系统中沿着社会关系链传递；影响链的传递以物质流、能量流、信息流的形式进行。气候变化的影响总是从低层级到高层级，沿着资源禀赋的变化上升到自然生产系统、经济生产系统直至社会系统。研究认为，有效阻控或切断气候变化不利影响的传递，能够有效降低气候变化影响的风险与损失。气候变化影响链及其形成机制为全面应对气候变化提供了思路与途径。     

Future habitat loss and the conservation of plant biodiversity

Rapid land-use and climate changes are projected to cause broad-scale global land-cover transformation that will increase species extinction rates. We assessed the exposure of globally threatened plant biodiversity to future habitat loss over the first half of this century by testing country-level associations between threatened plant species richness and future habitat loss owing to land-use and climate changes, separately. In countries overlapping Biodiversity Hotspots, plant species endangerment increases with climate change-driven habitat loss. This association suggests that many currently threatened plant species will become extinct owing to anthropogenic climate change in the absence of potentially mitigating factors such as natural and assisted range shift, and physiological and genetic adaptations. Countries rich in threatened species, which are also projected to have relatively high total future habitat loss, are concentrated around the equator. Because poverty and poor governance can compromise conservation, we considered the economic condition and quality of governance with the degree of plant species endangerment and future habitat loss to prioritize countries based on conservation need. We identified Angola, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Laos, Madagascar, Myanmar, Nepal, Tajikistan, and Tanzania as the countries in greatest need of conservation assistance. For conservation endeavors to be effective, the conservation capacity of these high-need countries needs to be improved by assisting political stability and economic sustainability. We make policy recommendations that aim to mitigate climate change, promote plant species conservation, and improve the economic conditions and quality of governance in countries with high conservation need.     

Conserving forest biodiversity across multiple land ownerships: Lessons from the Northwest Forest Plan and the Southeast Queensland regional forests agreement (Australia)

As the area of the world’s forests shrinks, the management of production forests is becoming increasingly paramount for biodiversity conservation. In the United States and Australia, public debate and controversy about the management of production forests during the later decades of the 20th century resulted in governments adopting sweeping top-down changes to forest policy, with regional forest plans a cornerstone of this process. This paper reviews the biodiversity conservation outcomes of two such processes, the Southeast Queensland Forests Agreement (Australia) and the Northwest Forest Plan (United States). Several key lessons are identified. First, these plans are significant steps forward in the struggle to conserve forest biodiversity while providing for production of timber. Second, expanding the conservation reserve system by itself does not necessarily ensure biodiversity conservation, especially if reserves are traded off for increased timber harvesting in forests outside of reserves or if certain important elements of biodiversity are not accounted for either by conservation forests or production forests. Third, reserves often need active management to restore diversity in previously-logged forests and reduce fuels that have accumulated as a result of fire exclusion. Fourth, the current plans fall short of the comprehensive whole-of-landscape, multiple-ownership approach needed to support long-term sustainable forestry and biodiversity conservation. Fifth, adaptive management was not adequately institutionalized and sometimes misapplied, although, in the case of the Pacific Northwest, a major regional monitoring strategy was developed and partially implemented. Finally, ecological science suffered in the collision with the socio-political decision-making process due to the limited scope that was left for testing and evaluating the new approaches to forest management. We conclude, based on the evaluation of the two regional plans, that regional biodiversity conservation goals may be better achieved by implementing sustainable forest management practices across all ownerships and involving all stakeholders and the broader community.     

气候变化对我国森林生态的影响

阐述了气候变化对我国森林地理分布格局、物候期、生物多样性、森林结构及生产力的影响。研究表明,气候变化对我国主要造林树种地理分布的影响多发生在气候交错地带,少部分发生在适宜分布区域,树种分布可能向北或向高海拔地区移动;不同区域树种物候期推迟或提前,原区域的适宜物种减少,新物种随气候变化迁入;气候变化基本未改变我国森林第一性生产力的地理分布格局,但群落生物量水平将有所提高,不同树种森林结构变化不同。通过采取积极的适应性措施可降低气候变化的不利影响。     

气候变化对非洲水资源和农业的影响

尽管非洲是世界上温室气体排放总量或人均排放量最少的地区,但在承受气候变化造成的恶劣影响方面首当其冲。气候变化已经给非洲的水资源、农业、生物多样性、人类健康和国家安全等带来诸多严重影响,粮食生产和水资源一直是非洲长期面临的两大难题,也是深受气候变化影响的两大领域还较欠缺,需要在未来的研究中进一步加强,以探寻减缓气候变化对非洲水资源和农业不利影响的有效途径。本文系统梳理了气候变化对非洲水资源系统和农业生产影响的研究成果和不足,以期为非洲气候变化影响评估工作提供一定参考和借鉴。已有的观测结果表明,气候变化导致非洲许多山脉冰川面积正在大范围缩减、大部分地区降水量有所减少,降雨的年际间分布也更为不稳定,通过水文模型的模拟预测,未来气候变化将进一步影响降水量和非洲部分地区河流的径流量,导致非洲水资源供给压力加大。同样,气候变化也给非洲农业生产带来了巨大的挑战,无论是观测结果分析,还是统计模型和作物模型等对不同气候情景和时间尺度下非洲农业的模拟研究,都显示气候变化对非洲农业以负面影响为主,导致非洲干旱加剧、生长季改变和粮食产量下降,并可能危及非洲的粮食安全。然而,现有研究结果还存在较多不确定性,其主要集中在未来气候情景数据、研究方法、数据的质量和数量等方面。与世界其它地区相比,非洲气候变化影响研究无论是研究的深度和广度都     

农业气候变化脆弱性评估研究进展

气候脆弱性问题是气候变化影响研究的重要内容，农业的气候变化脆弱性是国内外关注和研究的关键性问题。本文综述了脆弱性和农业对气候变化脆弱性的概念以及研究进展，并探讨了今后农业脆弱性研究的重点和难点问题。     

Long-distance plant dispersal and habitat fragmentation: identifying conservation targets for spatial landscape planning under climate change

Climate change presents a potentially severe threat to biodiversity. Species will be required to disperse rapidly through fragmented landscapes in order to keep pace with the changing climate. An important challenge for conservation is therefore to manage landscapes so as to assist species in tracking the environmental conditions to which they are adapted. Here we develop a stochastic spatially explicit model to simulate plant dispersal across artificial fragmented landscapes. Based on certain assumptions as to the dispersal mechanism, we assess the impact that varying potential for rare long-distance dispersal (LDD) has on the ability to move over landscapes with differing spatial arrangements of suitable habitat (clumped versus fragmented). Simulations demonstrate how the relative importance of landscape structure in determining migration ability may decrease as the potential for LDD increases. Thus, if LDD is the principal mechanism by which rapid large-scale migrations are achieved, strategically planned networks of protected habitat may have a limited impact on rates of large-scale plant migrations. We relate our results to conventional principles for conservation planning and the geometric design of reserves, and demonstrate how reversal of these principles may maximise the potential for conservation under future climates. In particular, we caution against the justification of large-scale corridors on grounds of climate change since migration along corridors by standard dispersal mechanisms is unlikely to keep pace with projected change for many species. An improved understanding of the dispersal mechanisms by which species achieve rapid migrations, and the way that these processes are affected by patterns of landscape fragmentation, will be important to inform future conservation strategies.     

Adapting conservation efforts to face climate change: Modifying nest-site provisioning for lesser kestrels

Adaptation to climate change has recently become a crucial element on the climate change policy agenda as it is now recognized that even the most stringent mitigation efforts may not arrest the effects of climate warming. The ecological impacts and costs of predicted weather-related extreme events, such as extreme temperatures, are not fully understood and may present unexpected challenges to conservationists that require solutions. In Portugal, provisioning of artificial nests has been the main driver of the spectacular increase in the endangered lesser kestrel population. Nevertheless, atypically high temperatures recorded during the 2009 breeding season coincided with a mortality of 22% of surveyed chicks in provided nests. Hot days did not affected prey delivery rates to the nestlings, suggesting that the die-off was due to chicks’ acute dehydration. Chick mortality was significantly higher amongst younger individuals. Within survivors, physiological costs of high temperatures significantly affected chick growth and body condition at fledging. Nest-site microclimate was influenced by nest-type and compass orientation: wooden nest-boxes attained the highest temperatures, exceeding 55 °C when facing south, so explaining the recorded higher mortality, lower growth rates and lower fledging body condition among broods in these nests. Simulated scenarios of global warming with increasing occupation rate of artificial nests due to reductions in alternatives predicted a reduction in population growth rate. In the worst scenario, with a 100% occupancy of nest-boxes, the population growth would decline on average 7% per year. The impact of high temperatures on lesser kestrel breeding success highlights a need for actions to modify and research to adapt conservation efforts and future planning to account for climate change.