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Are conservation organizations configured for effective adaptation to global change?
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Conservation organizations must adapt to respond to the ecological impacts of global change. Numerous
changes to conservation actions (eg facilitated ecological transitions, managed relocations, or increased corridordevelopment) have been recommended, but some institutional restructuring within organizations may also be needed. Here we discuss the capacity of conservation organizations to adapt to changing environmental
conditions, focusing primarily on public agencies and nonprofits active in land protection and management
in the US. After first reviewing how these organizations anticipate and detect impacts affecting target
species and ecosystems, we then discuss whether they are sufficiently flexible to prepare and respond by reallocating funding, staff, or other resources. We raise new hypotheses about how the configuration of different
organizations enables them to protect particular conservation targets and manage for particular biophysical
changes that require coordinated management actions over different spatial and temporal scales. Finally, we
provide a discussion resource to help conservation organizations assess their capacity to adapt.
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Assessing Vulnerability of Species and Habitats to Large-scale Impacts
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New vulnerability assessments for 41 species and 3 habitats in the Appalachians are now available. The conservation community can view and search each of these assessments by vulnerability scores, conservation status ranks, state and subregion of assessment, and higher taxonomy. In addition, principle investigators NatureServe compiled the results of 700 species assessments previously completed by other researchers as well as assessments on several habitats.
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Funded Projects
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BIG DATA as an engine for aquatic information creation
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The smartest thing, the only thing really, we can do to conserve & preserve fisheries and aquatic biodiversity as the climate warms this century is to invest our limited resources wisely.
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Bird population trends are linearly affected by climate change along species thermal ranges
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Beyond the effects of temperature increase on local population trends and on species distribution shifts, how populations of a given species are affected by climate change along a species range is still unclear. We tested whether and how species responses to climate change are related to the populations locations within the species thermal range. We compared the average 20 year growth rates of 62 terrestrial breeding birds in three European countries along the latitudinal gradient of the species ranges. After controlling for factors already reported to affect bird population trends (habitat specialization, migration distance and body mass), we found that populations breeding close to the species thermal maximum have lower growth rates than those in other parts of the thermal range, while those breeding close to the species thermal minimum have higher growth rates. These results were maintained even after having controlled for the effect of latitude per se. Therefore, the results cannot solely be explained by latitudinal clines linked to the geographical structure in local spring warming. Indeed, we found that populations are not just responding to changes in temperature at the hottest and coolest parts of the species range, but that they show a linear graded response across their European thermal range. We thus provide insights into how populations respond to climate changes. We suggest that projections of future species distributions, and also management options and conservation assessments, cannot be based on the assumption of a uniform response to climate change across a species range or at range edges only.
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Building Climate Solutions: 14th National Conference and Global Forum on Science, Policy and the Environment
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Join over 1,200 key individuals from many fields of sciences and engineering, government and policy, business and civil society to advance solutions to climate change.
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Events
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Building community resilience by strengthening America’s natural resources and supporting green infrastructure
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President Obama has made it clear that we have a moral obligation to our children and future generations to leave behind a planet that is not polluted and damaged. That is why, as part of his effort to combat climate change, the President launched a Climate Action Plan last year to cut carbon pollution, prepare communities for the impacts of climate change, and lead international efforts to address this global challenge.
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Butler, Patricia
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Coordinator, Climate Change Response Framework
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Expertise Search
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C4 Photosynthesis: Differentiating Causation and Coincidence
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Determination of the historical causes of organismal adaptations is difficult, but a recent study has suggested that at least one of the transitions to C4 photosynthesis was directly facilitated by changes in atmospheric CO2 levels. But what about the other 50+ origins of C4?
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Call for a climate culture shift
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A new book describes the rapid reshaping of human priorities needed to save the planet from global warming. Some of that change is already under way at the community level, explains Robert Costanza.
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Can Plants Adapt? New Questions in Climate Change Research
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As it becomes increasingly apparent that human activities are partly responsible for global warming, the focus of climate change research is shifting from the churning out of assessments to the pursuit of science that can test the robustness of existing models. The questions now being addressed are becoming more challenging:The questions now being addressed are becoming more challenging: Can water-use efficiency of plants keep up with rising temperatures? Will we see a greening period for some decades, even a century, before facing a rapid browndown as threshold temperatures are reached? Or could the thresholds be reached much sooner because of interactions of biophysical processes? Is the carbon storage issue missing the point?
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