Adaptation approaches for conserving ecosystems services and biodiversity in dynamic landscapes caused by climate change

Abstract

Climate change stands to cause animal species to shift their geographic ranges. This will cause ecosystems to become reorganized across landscapes as species migrate into and out of specific locations with attendant impacts on values and services that ecosystems provide to humans. Conservation in an era of climate change needs to ensure that landscapes are resilient by devising adaptation strategies to deal with such dynamism. This requires anticipating the future fate of species and ecosystems as well as implementing spatially explicit adaptation that enables species, ecosystems and their services to persist across vast landscapes. This paper describes a framework that highlights six spatially explicit adaptation approaches that emulate natural ecological resilience in support of landscape-scale adaptation planning. These include understanding and better sustaining concentrations of current biodiversity on landscapes and ecosystems services; anticipating where species will migrate so as not to develop landscapes in ways that impede their movement; and establish landscape connectivity between habitats and geophysical settings to ensure species can reach thermally favorable new environments as they are displaced by climate change. We discuss how to deploy the adaptation approaches in conservation assessments aimed at supporting land use planning for conservation and compatible land uses, highlighting the importance of using multiple approaches to develop coherent plans that address multiple stakeholder interests.

Parent Publication

• Forest conservation and management in the Anthropocene: Conference proceedings

Citation

Schmitz, Oswald J.; Trainor, Anne M. 2014. Adaptation approaches for conserving ecosystems services and biodiversity in dynamic landscapes caused by climate change. In: Sample, V. Alaric; Bixler, R. Patrick, eds. Forest conservation and management in the Anthropocene: Conference proceedings. Proceedings. RMRS-P-71. Fort Collins, CO: US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. Rocky Mountain Research Station. p. 297-309.