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201514Mar11:45

Role of cur­rent trop­i­cal pro­tected areas ques­tion­able under cli­mate change

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pub­lished 14 March 2015 | mod­i­fied 14 March 2015
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Primary rainforest SabahNew research led by Uni­ver­sity of York sci­en­tists high­lights how poor con­nec­tiv­ity of pro­tected area (PA) net­works in South­east Asia may pre­vent low­land species from respond­ing to cli­mate change.

Trop­i­cal species are shift­ing to higher ele­va­tions in response to ris­ing tem­per­a­tures, but there has been only lim­ited research into the effec­tive­ness of cur­rent pro­tected area net­works in facil­i­tat­ing such move­ments in the face of cli­mate change.

How­ever, the new study, pub­lished online on 10 March in the jour­nal Bio­log­i­cal Con­ser­va­tion, focuses on the con­nec­tiv­ity of the pro­tected area net­work on the highly bio­log­i­cally diverse island of Bor­neo. The island is fac­ing severe pres­sure due to defor­esta­tion and cul­ti­va­tion of oil palm plan­ta­tions, result­ing in an impor­tant bio­di­ver­sity con­ser­va­tion role for pro­tected areas in this region.

Our new research high­lights the iso­la­tion of low-​lying pro­tected areas on Bor­neo. Man­age­ment to improve link­age of pro­tected areas along ele­va­tion gra­di­ents should be a con­ser­va­tion priority.
Pro­fes­sor Jane Hill, project leader »

The research paper analy­ses future changes in the spa­tial dis­tri­b­u­tion of cli­mate within pro­tected areas, and also uses pop­u­la­tion mod­el­ling to exam­ine their con­nec­tiv­ity. The results sug­gest that low ele­va­tion pro­tected areas are par­tic­u­larly vul­ner­a­ble to cli­mate change, and that man­age­ment to improve their link­age as ter­rain increases in ele­va­tion should be a con­ser­va­tion priority.

The study shows that ana­logue cli­mates will shift out of more than 61 per cent of pro­tected areas result­ing in many species need­ing to move to cooler areas if they are to track cli­mate changes. The study also reveals that many low-​lying pro­tected areas are iso­lated and not well con­nected to cooler forested areas at higher elevation.

Co-​author Dr Colin McClean, from the Envi­ron­ment Depart­ment at York, said: “We show that the major­ity of PAs on Bor­neo will fail to retain ana­logue cli­mate con­di­tions in future, and these PAs are pri­mar­ily located in low­land areas. This is wor­ry­ing because there has been huge expan­sion of oil palm plan­ta­tions in trop­i­cal low­lands in recent decades, not just in Bor­neo, but all over South­east Asia.”

Co-​author Dr Jenny Hodg­son, now of the Uni­ver­sity of Liv­er­pool but for­merly in the Depart­ment of Biol­ogy at York, who devel­oped the pop­u­la­tion model used in the study, said: “Our results are con­cern­ing because bio­di­ver­sity is known to peak in low-​lying forests, and in Bor­neo these forests con­tain excep­tion­ally high num­bers of endemic species. Large-​scale oil palm plan­ta­tions will likely act as bar­ri­ers to species mov­ing between PAs.”



(Source: Uni­ver­sity of York media release, 13.03.2015)


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