Geodiversity Key to Conserving Biodiversity Under Climate Change
In a special issue of Conservation Biology, Nature Conservancy scientists and 32 other leading researchers from around the world, make the case for incorporating geodiversity into conservation planning. The papers highlight that given differences in geodiversity, certain landscapes are more resilient to the impacts of climate change than others and are better able to sustain native wildlife and ecological processes. They also point out that by protecting these strongholds across all types of soils and bedrock, conservationists can ensure that a broad number of species have suitable habitat.
“The approach is attractive because it focuses conservation on the physical factors that create diversity in the first place, while allowing species and communities to rearrange in response to a changing climate,” said Dr. Mark Anderson, The Nature Conservancy’s director of science for the eastern United States division and one of the editors of the papers. “It provides a logical structure for designing conservation networks that assume nature is dynamic and resilient, and challenges us to create arenas for evolution not museums of the past.”
This strategy — nicknamed “conserving nature’s stage” — also has the advantage of relying on on-the-ground information, instead of predictive climate models that are at best a rough estimate of how the world will change.
Research also indicates that conserving nature’s stage is not expected to vastly alter existing conservation plans. “It’s complementary, not competitive with current planning efforts,” says Anderson.
By analyzing eight case studies, Anderson and his colleagues found that incorporating geodiversity targets into traditional conservation planning does not typically increase the total area prioritized, and does not decrease the success of other conservation targets.
“Conserving nature’s stage helps us ensure that different suites of species will have a place on the landscape,” adds Ken Elowe, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service assistant regional director of science applications for the Northeast region.
“While it may never be an agency directive, I think that the idea of conserving nature’s stage will gain a lot of traction,” says Elowe. “Its an assurance that the uncertainty of climate and species assemblages will somehow be smoothed over if we take into account the geophysically important characteristics that we know will always be important. It intuitively fills a gap in conservation planning that people have been uneasy about for long time.”
