Targeted protection and restoration to conserve tropical biodiversity in a warming world

Complex landscapes interact with meteorological processes to generate climatically suitable habitat (refuges) in otherwise hostile environments. Locating these refuges has practical importance in tropical montane regions where a high diversity of climatically specialized species is threatened by cli...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Global change biology 2011, Vol.17 (1), p.186-193
Main Authors: SHOO, LUKE P, STORLIE, COLLIN, VANDERWAL, JEREMY, LITTLE, JEREMY, WILLIAMS, STEPHEN E
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
adaptation management
Animal and plant ecology
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Applied ecology
Biodiversity
Biological and medical sciences
climate change
Conservation biology
Conservation, protection and management of environment and wildlife
Environmental degradation: ecosystems survey and restoration
Environmental protection
Environmental restoration
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
General aspects
Global warming
Habitats
heat stress
montane biodiversity
Rainforests
refugia
temperature buffering
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Complex landscapes interact with meteorological processes to generate climatically suitable habitat (refuges) in otherwise hostile environments. Locating these refuges has practical importance in tropical montane regions where a high diversity of climatically specialized species is threatened by climate change. Here, we use a combination of weather data and spatial modeling to quantify thermally buffered environments in a regional tropical rainforest. We do this by constructing a spatial surface of maximum air temperature that takes into account important climate-mediating processes. We find a strong attenuating effect of elevation, distance from coast and foliage cover on maximum temperature. The core habitat of a disproportionately high number of endemic species (45%) is encompassed within just 25% of the coolest identified rainforest. We demonstrate how this data can be used to (i) identify important areas of cool habitat for protection and (ii) efficiently guide restoration in degraded landscapes to expand extant networks of critical cool habitat.
ISSN:1354-1013
1365-2486
DOI:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2010.02218.x