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245 00 |a The implications of climate change biodiversity conservation and the National Reserve System |h [electronic resource] |b Final Synthesis.
260        |a [S.l.] : |b CSIRO, |c 2012.
490        |a Climate Adaptation Flagship.
506        |a Please contact the owning institution for licensing and permissions. It is the user's responsibility to ensure use does not violate any third party rights.
520 3    |a 6 Protected areas are a crucial component of strategies for conserving biodiversity; however, their selection and design are usually not informed about the impacts of climate change. To inform future management of protected areas in Australia under climate change scenarios, this project produced the first Australia-wide, assessment of the magnitude of ecological impact that climate change could have on biodiversity, using three state-of-the-art quantitative techniques. These analyses were then used in detailed ecological assessments of climate impacts and adaptation options in four major biomes—Hummock grasslands; Tropical savanna woodlands and grasslands; Temperate grasslands and grassy woodlands; and Sclerophyll forests of south-eastern Australia—using existing literature and technical information, as well as workshops that elicited local knowledge and concerns. Spatial modelling approaches The project assessed the significance of future climatic change for biodiversity in two scenarios (medium impact and high impact) and in two time frames (2030 and 2070) by running three different spatial analyses across multiple environmental layers and various types of biological information. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) were used to classify current environments by vegetation classes (largely structural), and then this classification was applied to future environments. Generalised Dissimilarity Modelling (GDM) was used to estimate the sensitivity of species composition of communities to environmental variation. A Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) was used to incorporate observed and expert information to assess changes in suitability of environmental conditions for the alien invasive species buffel grass. These analyses provide an index of “biotically scaled environmental stress”. By stress we mean a force likely to lead to aggregate change from the current state of biodiversity. By biotically scaled we mean that environmental variables have been weighted according to their relative importance for Australian biodiversity. The most important feature of this interpretation is that it describes change in the environment (the external drivers of ecological change), not the amount or type of change in biodiversity in response. Thus, these measures are free of many of the ecological assumptions—often implicit—that apply to most predictions of biodiversity impacts. Environmental and ecological change The project predicts dramatic environmental change due to climate change: these changes will be ecologically very significant, and will result in many novel environments quite unlike those currently occurring anywhere on the continent, and the disappearance of many environments currently occupied by Australian biodiversity. While biodiversity impacts from these changed environments may be buffered when species exploit natural variation in the environment, our results suggest that the magnitude of change will overcome these buffering effects by 2070. Changing temperature, moisture availability and fire regimes are likely to lead to changes in vegetation structure, and it is likely there will be a gradual turnover of species along vegetation-structure gradients. Historical habitat loss and fragmentation due to land clearing will exacerbate the impacts of climate change; land-use intensification, as a response to climate change in agricultural and forestry sectors, remains a major threat to biodiversity. Increases in fire weather across much of Australia are very likely, which could have significant impacts on composition, structure, habitat heterogeneity and ecosystem processes. Expansion of alien species capable of altering fire regimes (e.g. buffel grass) is likely, and changes in the interactions between species could be as important to ecological outcomes as geographic shifts in suitable environment. Changes in climate variability, as well as averages, could be important drivers of altered species interactions. Adapting to climate change Climate change is a fundamentally different biodiversity threat in its geographic extent, magnitude and speed of potential changes. It poses a significant challenge for conservation scientists and practitioners at a time when the science of climate change impacts is still developing and there is little certainty of the details of change. Our results suggest that we will need to examine the threat to a range of biodiversity values, then derive conservation objectives and programs that preserve ecological processes while allowing or even facilitating changes in biodiversity states. We need to increase the efficiency of limited conservation resources by focusing investment on those places or species that achieve the “greatest marginal loss avoided”, but do this using robust strategy that are effective under a wide range of future magnitudes and types of change, and for a wide range of species. The most appropriate local scale management response to the predicted high level of biotically scaled environmental stress will vary between regions. However, the project showed that the strategy underpinning the NRS is likely to be highly robust in the face of significant environmental change. Some expansion of the NRS may be needed to help biodiversity respond to the changing distributions of biotically scaled environments across the continent. Iterative changes to management will allow a staged approach to adapting to high levels of future environmental change. A first step could be to focus on understanding the implications of different changes that might occur for different areas of conservation planning, and mainstreaming climate change into planning, rather than treating it as a separate threat to manage. The second phase would focus on conservation objectives, understanding that the choice between encouraging change, managing change, passively allowing change, or actively minimising change will affect management of protected areas. The third stage is to use information from the first two stages to revise management strategies and adaption pathways across a series of plans of management. Key knowledge gaps The science of biodiversity impacts is developing rapidly in Australia and internationally but biodiversity managers are now working with high levels of uncertainty. This project identified that a new discipline of climate change biogeography, which attempts to integrate the disparate approaches and information about climate change impacts, is needed. We will also need to have informed debate in science, policy and public domains about the social values associated with biodiversity, to develop suitable conservation objectives. This will require more information about region-specific impacts and their implications, and about landscape processes and features that facilitate persistence and adaptability of biodiversity. A richer body of science-policy knowledge is required to enable managers to determine and seek the information that will be useful to them, and to help researchers develop analysis tools and monitoring. Managers will also need more knowledge and tools to help them balance worthy but competing demands. Finally, we will need more understanding and better tools to help us deal with uncertainty. Conclusions and implications for the NRS This project showed that climate change is likely to lead to very significant and widespread ecological impacts. Although spatial environmental heterogeneity may help buffer the impact for some species, the buffering will vary regionally. There will be many threats to biodiversity, including alien species, altered fire regimes, and human uses of land and water due to adaptation in other sectors. As a result, we will need to reassess our conservation objectives, understanding that biodiversity and our biodiversity values will change. We will also need to consider regional social and ecological factors when developing management approaches, and these approaches will need to be robust in the face of high levels of uncertainty. The NRS is such a robust strategy, maintaining representativeness even in the face of climate change, but management of protected areas and landscapes will need to be adapted and revised over time. Gaps in science, management and policy knowledge and tools were identified, which will help direct management and research development.
533        |a Electronic reproduction. |c Florida International University, |d 2015. |f (dpSobek) |n Mode of access: World Wide Web. |n System requirements: Internet connectivity; Web browser software.
600        |a. |x National Reserve System (Australia)
650        |a climate change.
650        |a biodiversity.
650        |a environmental policy.
700        |a Michael Dunlop.
700        |a David W. Hilbert.
700        |a Simon Ferrier.
700        |a Alan House.
700        |a Adam Liedloff.
700        |a Suzanne M. Prober.
700        |a Anita Smyth.
700        |a Tara G.Martin.
700        |a Tom Harwood.
700        |a Kristen J. Williams.
700        |a Cameron Fletcher.
700        |a Helen Murphy.
830    0 |a dpSobek.
830    0 |a Sea Level Rise.
830    0 |a International Documents Collection.
852        |a dpSobek |c Sea Level Rise
856 40 |u http://dpanther.fiu.edu/dpService/dpPurlService/purl/FI15061015/00001 |y Click here for full text
992 04 |a http://dpanther.fiu.edu/sobek/content/FI/15/06/10/15/00001/Dunlop et al_2012_The implications of climate change for biodiversity conservation and thethm.jpg
997        |a Sea Level Rise


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