Speaker
Description
Fragmentation of viable habitat patches by human land use change is a global threat to the maintenance of biodiversity and resilient ecosystems. This threat is compounded by climate change which will require many animal and plant species to shift their natural geographic ranges to stay within a sustainable habitat-climate envelope. Currently, there is general concern that the configuration of the world’s protected areas is inadequate for maintaining the required connections needed for species to shift their range. It is therefore highly important to evaluate how human land use and climate change could influence ecological connectivity moving into the future in order to plan for an expanded protected area network. Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) climate change scenarios and Nature Futures Framework (NFF) land use scenarios provide a means of projecting changes in landscape land use under diverging social and ecological conditions. Subsequently, this allows estimating how ecological connectivity could spatially change under those diverging future conditions. We used graph and omnidirectional circuit-theory models to evaluate how ecological connectivity could change under four different future land use scenarios compared to current conditions. Overall, mean cost distance for corridors across the connectivity networks were higher under all future conditions when compared with current conditions. This indicates that no matter the future scenario, biodiversity attempting to traverse future corridors will face higher landscape resistances likely increasing levels of stress and mortality threat. Omnidirectional models showed more area under high priority status with Nature for Society and Nature as Culture scenarios due to relatively higher intensity human land use compressing movement into narrower landscape channels. However, the overall prioritized rankings of corridors did not substantially change across scenarios. These results can be directly incorporated into spatial planning at the regional, national and multi-national scales in order to better capture future threats to connectivity and biodiversity.
| Status Group | Postdoctoral Researcher |
|---|---|
| FOR TALKS: Poster Presentation Option | Yes, I’m willing to present as a poster. |