D. Scott Rinnan, Ph.D.

D. Scott Rinnan, Ph.D.

Diversity, equity, and justice through data science.

Planning for climate change through additions to a national protected area network: implications for cost and configuration

Published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2020.

Lawler JJ, Rinnan DS, Michalak JL, Withey JC, Randels CR and Possingham HP. "Planning for climate change through additions to a national protected area network: implications for cost and configuration." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 375(1794). https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0117
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Abstract:

Expanding the network of protected areas is a core strategy for conserving biodiversity in the face of climate change. Here, we explore the impacts on reserve network cost and configuration associated with planning for climate change in the USA using networks that prioritize areas projected to be climatically suitable for 1460 species both today and into the future, climatic refugia and areas likely to facilitate climate-driven species movements. For 14% of the species, networks of sites selected solely to protect areas currently climatically suitable failed to provide climatically suitable habitat in the future. Protecting sites climatically suitable for species today and in the future significantly changed the distribution of priority sites across the USA—increasing relative protection in the northeast, northwest and central USA. Protecting areas projected to retain their climatic suitability for species cost 59% more than solely protecting currently suitable areas. Including all climatic refugia and 20% of areas that facilitate climate-driven movements increased the cost by another 18%. Our results indicate that protecting some types of climatic refugia may be a relatively inexpensive adaptation strategy. Moreover, although addressing climate change in conservation plans will have significant implications for the configuration of networks, the increased cost of doing so may be relatively modest.

Relative importance of sites.
Figure 2. The difference in the relative importance of sites for (a) protecting species-specific refugia and current species distributions (Figure 1b,a), (b) species current distributions and climatic refugia and solely protecting current species distributions (Figure 1c,a), and (c) current species distributions and corridors designed to facilitate climate-driven species movements and solely protecting current species distributions (Figure 1d,a). Green areas are more important for addressing climate change and pink areas are important for protecting current species distributions but are less important for addressing climate change.