Toward a climate‐informed North American protected areas network: Incorporating climate‐change refugia and corridors in conservation planning

Animal migration in the Anthropocene: threats and mitigation options

Animal migration has fascinated scientists and the public alike for centuries, yet migratory animals are facing diverse threats that could lead to their demise. The Anthropocene is characterised by the reality that humans are the dominant force on Earth, having manifold negative effects on biodiversity and ecosystem function. Considerable research focus has been given to assessing anthropogenic impacts on the numerical abundance of species/populations, whereas relatively less attention has been devoted to animal migration. However, there are clear linkages, for example, where human-driven impacts on migration behaviour can lead to population/species declines or even extinction. Here, we explore anthropogenic threats to migratory animals (in all domains - aquatic, terrestrial, and aerial) using International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Threat Taxonomy classifications. We reveal the diverse threats (e.g. human development, disease, invasive species, climate change, exploitation, pollution) that impact migratory wildlife in varied ways spanning taxa, life stages and type of impact (e.g. from direct mortality to changes in behaviour, health, and physiology). Notably, these threats often interact in complex and unpredictable ways to the detriment of wildlife, further complicating management. Fortunately, we are beginning to identify strategies for conserving and managing migratory animals in the Anthropocene. We provide a set of strategies that, if embraced, have the potential to ensure that migratory animals, and the important ecological functions sustained by migration, persist.

Dependence of Europe's most threatened mammals on movement to adapt to climate change

Current rates of climate change and gloomy climate projections confront managers and conservation planners with the need to integrate climate change into already complex decision-making processes. Predicting and prioritizing climatically stable areas and the areas likely to facilitate adaptive species' range adjustments are important stages in maximizing conservation outcomes and rationalizing future land management. I determined, for the most threatened European terrestrial mammal species, the spatial adaptive trajectories (SATs) of highest expected persistence up to 2080. I devised simple spatial network indices for evaluation of species in those SATs: total persistence; proportion of SATs that offer in situ adaptation (i.e., stable refugia); number of SATs converging in a site; and relationship between SAT convergence and persistence and protected areas, the Natura 2000 and Emerald networks, and areas of low human disturbance. I compared the performance of high-persistence SATs with a scenario in which each species remained in the areas with the best climatic conditions in the baseline period. The 1000 most persistence SATs for each of the 39 species covered one fifth of Europe. The areas with the largest adaptive potential (i.e., high persistence, stability, and SAT convergence) did not always overlap for all the species. Predominantly, these regions were located in southwestern Europe, Central Europe, and Scandinavia, with some occurrences in Eastern Europe. For most species, persistence in the most climatically suitable areas during the baseline period was lower than within SATs, underscoring their reliance on adaptive movements. Importantly, conservation areas (particularly protected areas) covered only minor fractions of species persistence among SATs, and hubs of spatial climate adaptation (i.e., areas of high SAT convergence) were seriously underrepresented in most conservation areas. These results highlight the need to perform analyses on spatial species' dynamics under climate change.

A comprehensive analysis to optimizing national-scale protected area systems under climate change

With the intensification of climate change, incorporating climate information into protected areas planning has become crucial in reducing biodiversity loss. However, the current natural reserve system in China does not take climate information into account. Therefore, we assessed the effectiveness of existing protected areas through climate refuge and connectivity rankings, and Zonation software was used to identify the ecological priority zone in China by combining climate indicators and human footprint. The results show that the current natural protected areas in China have certain limitations in dealing with climate change, and some protected areas may struggle to maintain their value in biodiversity conservation under climate change. Moreover, China still has lots of important areas that can maintain biodiversity under climate change, but most of them are not covered by protected areas. The results provide support for the planning of China's nature protected area system in response to climate change.

Prioritizing conservation efforts based on future habitat availability and accessibility under climate change

The potential for species to shift their ranges to avoid extinction is contingent on the future availability and accessibility of habitats with analogous climates. To develop conservation strategies, many previous researchers used a single method that considered individual factors; a few combined 2 factors. Primarily, these studies focused on identifying climate refugia or climatically connected and spatially fixed areas, ignoring the range shifting process of animals. We quantified future habitat availability (based on species occurrence, climate data, land cover, and elevation) and accessibility (based on climate velocity) under climate change (4 scenarios) of migratory birds across the Yangtze River basin (YRB). Then, we assessed species' range-shift potential and identified conservation priority areas for migratory birds in the 2050s with a network analysis. Our results suggested that medium (i.e., 5-10 km/year) and high (i.e., ≥ 10 km/year) climate velocity would threaten 18.65% and 8.37% of stable habitat, respectively. Even with low (i.e., 0-5 km/year) climate velocity, 50.15% of climate-velocity-identified destinations were less available than their source habitats. Based on our integration of habitat availability and accessibility, we identified a few areas of critical importance for conservation, mainly in Sichuan and the middle to lower reaches of the YRB. Overall, we identified the differences between habitat availability and accessibility in capturing biological responses to climate change. More importantly, we accounted for the dynamic process of species' range shifts, which must be considered to identify conservation priority areas. Our method informs forecasting of climate-driven distribution shifts and conservation priorities.

Topography-driven microclimate gradients shape forest structure, diversity, and composition in a temperate refugial forest

Macroclimate drives vegetation distributions, but fine-scale topographic variation can generate microclimate refugia for plant persistence in unsuitable areas. However, we lack quantitative descriptions of topography-driven microclimatic variation and how it shapes forest structure, diversity, and composition. We hypothesized that topographic variation and the presence of the forest overstory cause spatiotemporal microclimate variation affecting tree performance, causing forest structure, diversity, and composition to vary with topography and microclimate, and topography and the overstory to buffer microclimate. In a 20.2-ha inventory plot in the North American Great Plains, we censused woody stems ≥1 cm in diameter and collected detailed topographic and microclimatic data. Across 59-m of elevation, microclimate covaried with topography to create a sharp desiccation gradient, and topography and the overstory buffered understory microclimate. The magnitude of microclimatic variation mirrored that of regional-scale variation: with increasing elevation, there was a decrease in soil moisture corresponding to the difference across ~2.1° of longitude along the east-to-west aridity gradient and an increase in air temperature corresponding to the difference across ~2.7° of latitude along the north-to-south gradient. More complex forest structure and higher diversity occurred in moister, less-exposed habitats, and species occupied distinct topographic niches. Our study demonstrates how topographic and microclimatic gradients structure forests in putative climate-change refugia, by revealing ecological processes enabling populations to be maintained during periods of unfavorable macroclimate.

Mapping climate adaptation corridors for biodiversity-A regional-scale case study in Central America

Climate adaptation corridors are widely recognized as important for promoting biodiversity resilience under climate change. Central America is part of the Mesoamerican biodiversity hotspot, but there have been no regional-scale analyses of potential climate adaptation corridors in Central America. We identified 2375 potential corridors throughout Central America that link lowland protected areas (≤ 500 m) with intact, high-elevation forests (≥ 1500 m) that represent potential climate change refugia. Whereas we found potential corridors in all Central American countries, potential corridors in Panama, Belize, and Honduras were most protected (medians = 64%, 49%, and 47%, respectively) and potential corridors in El Salvador were least protected (median = 10%). We also developed a corridor priority index based on the ecological characteristics and protected status of potential corridors and their associated start and end points. Compared to low- and medium-priority corridors, high-priority corridors (n = 160; top 7% of all corridors) were generally more protected, forested, and distributed across wider elevational gradients and more Key Biodiversity Areas, but also generally linked larger lowland protected areas to target areas that were larger, more protected, and spanned wider elevational gradients. For example, based on median values, high-priority corridors were 9% more protected and overlapped with 2-3 more Key Biodiversity Areas than low- and medium-priority corridors. Although high-elevation targets spanned considerably wider elevational gradients than lowland protected areas (medians = 695 vs. 142 m, respectively) and thus may be more likely to support refugia, they were considerably smaller than lowland protected areas (medians = 11 vs. 50 km2 respectively) and mostly unprotected (median = 4% protection). This initial, regional assessment can help prioritize locations for finer-scale research, conservation, and restoration activities in support of climate adaptation corridors throughout Central America and highlights the need for greater conservation of potential high-elevation refugia.

Evaluating density-weighted connectivity of black bears (Ursus americanus) in Glacier National Park with spatial capture-recapture models

BACKGROUND

Improved understanding of wildlife population connectivity among protected area networks can support effective planning for the persistence of wildlife populations in the face of land use and climate change. Common approaches to estimating connectivity often rely on small samples of individuals without considering the spatial structure of populations, leading to limited understanding of how individual movement links to demography and population connectivity. Recently developed spatial capture-recapture (SCR) models provide a framework to formally connect inference about individual movement, connectivity, and population density, but few studies have applied this approach to empirical data to support connectivity planning.

METHODS

We used mark-recapture data collected from 924 genetic detections of 598 American black bears (Ursus americanus) in 2004 with SCR ecological distance models to simultaneously estimate density, landscape resistance to movement, and population connectivity in Glacier National Park northwest Montana, USA. We estimated density and movement parameters separately for males and females and used model estimates to calculate predicted density-weighted connectivity surfaces.

RESULTS

Model results indicated that landscape structure influences black bear density and space use in Glacier. The mean density estimate was 16.08 bears/100 km2 (95% CI 12.52-20.6) for females and 9.27 bears/100 km2 (95% CI 7.70-11.14) for males. Density increased with forest cover for both sexes. For male black bears, density decreased at higher grizzly bear (Ursus arctos) densities. Drainages, valley bottoms, and riparian vegetation decreased estimates of landscape resistance to movement for male and female bears. For males, forest cover also decreased estimated resistance to movement, but a transportation corridor bisecting the study area strongly increased resistance to movement presenting a barrier to connectivity.

CONCLUSIONS

Density-weighed connectivity surfaces highlighted areas important for population connectivity that were distinct from areas with high potential connectivity. For black bears in Glacier and surrounding landscapes, consideration of both vegetation and valley topography could inform the placement of underpasses along the transportation corridor in areas characterized by both high population density and potential connectivity. Our study demonstrates that the SCR ecological distance model can provide biologically realistic, spatially explicit predictions to support movement connectivity planning across large landscapes.

30×30 biodiversity gains rely on national coordination

Global commitments to protect 30% of land by 2030 present an opportunity to combat the biodiversity crisis, but reducing extinction risk will depend on where countries expand protection. Here, we explore a range of 30×30 conservation scenarios that vary what dimension of biodiversity is prioritized (taxonomic groups, species-at-risk, biodiversity facets) and how protection is coordinated (transnational, national, or regional approaches) to test which decisions influence our ability to capture biodiversity in spatial planning. Using Canada as a model nation, we evaluate how well each scenario captures biodiversity using scalable indicators while accounting for climate change, data bias, and uncertainty. We find that only 15% of all terrestrial vertebrates, plants, and butterflies (representing only 6.6% of species-at-risk) are adequately represented in existing protected land. However, a nationally coordinated approach to 30×30 could protect 65% of all species representing 40% of all species-at-risk. How protection is coordinated has the largest impact, with regional approaches protecting up to 38% fewer species and 65% fewer species-at-risk, while the choice of biodiversity incurs much smaller trade-offs. These results demonstrate the potential of 30×30 while highlighting the critical importance of biodiversity-informed national strategies.

Assessing the impacts of recreation on the spatial and temporal activity of mammals in an isolated alpine protected area

The management objectives of many protected areas must meet the dual mandates of protecting biodiversity while providing recreational opportunities. It is difficult to balance these mandates because it takes considerable effort to monitor both the status of biodiversity and impacts of recreation. Using detections from 45 camera traps deployed between July 2019 and September 2021, we assessed the potential impacts of recreation on spatial and temporal activity for 8 medium- and large-bodied terrestrial mammals in an isolated alpine protected area: Cathedral Provincial Park, British Columbia, Canada. We hypothesised that some wildlife perceive a level of threat from people, such that they avoid 'risky times' or 'risky places' associated with human activity. Other species may benefit from associating with people, be it through access to anthropogenic resource subsidies or filtering of competitors/predators that are more human-averse (i.e., human shield hypothesis). Specifically, we predicted that large carnivores would show the greatest segregation from people while mesocarnivores and ungulates would associate spatially with people. We found spatial co-occurrence between ungulates and recreation, consistent with the human shield hypothesis, but did not see the predicted negative relationship between larger carnivores and humans, except for coyotes (Canis latrans). Temporally, all species other than cougars (Puma concolor) had diel activity patterns significantly different from that of recreationists, suggesting potential displacement in the temporal niche. Wolves (Canis lupus) and mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) showed shifts in temporal activity away from people on recreation trails relative to off-trail areas, providing further evidence of potential displacement. Our results highlight the importance of monitoring spatial and temporal interactions between recreation activities and wildlife communities, in order to ensure the effectiveness of protected areas in an era of increasing human impacts.

Spatial analysis enables priority selection in conservation practices for landscapes that need ecological security

Global urbanization has not only promoted social and economic development, but also contributed to seriously ecological challenges. As a type of sustainable landscape patterns, ecological security pattern is considered as an effective spatial pathway to simultaneously conserve ecological security and maintain social-economic development. However, the fragmentation issue of ecological sources of ecological security pattern has not been effectively addressed, although many case studies have been conducted to identify ecological security pattern. In this study, we used spatial conservation prioritization to identify the ecological security pattern of the city belt along the Yellow River in Ningxia, China. Ecological sources were selected using Zonation model while ecological corridors and key ecological nodes were identified with circuit model. The results showed that the ecological security pattern was composed of 97 ecological sources, 226 ecological corridors, 267 pinch points and 22 barriers, covering a total area of 7713.1 km2 and accounting for 34% of the study area. Ecological sources were concentrated in the Helan Mountain, Xiang Mountain and along the Yellow River. Besides, ecological corridors were dense in the southern and eastern part of the study area. Both indicated that the Yellow River and Helan Mountain were the conservation hotspots. Landscape connectivity of ecological sources identified through Zonation-based spatial conservation prioritization was better than that with the scoring approach based on ecosystem service importance. Particularly, in the Zonation approach the landscape connectivity increased with 44% while the average patch area increased with 28% when comparing with the scoring approach. The spatial conservation prioritization approach proposed in this study provides a new effective tool to construct ecological security pattern, which is conducive to the synergic enhancement of landscape connectivity and ecosystem services conservation.

A metric-based framework for climate-smart conservation planning

Climate change is already having profound effects on biodiversity, but climate change adaptation has yet to be fully incorporated into area-based management tools used to conserve biodiversity, such as protected areas. One main obstacle is the lack of consensus regarding how impacts of climate change can be included in spatial conservation plans. We propose a climate-smart framework that prioritizes the protection of climate refugia-areas of low climate exposure and high biodiversity retention-using climate metrics. We explore four aspects of climate-smart conservation planning: (1) climate model ensembles; (2) multiple emission scenarios; (3) climate metrics; and (4) approaches to identifying climate refugia. We illustrate this framework in the Western Pacific Ocean, but it is equally applicable to terrestrial systems. We found that all aspects of climate-smart conservation planning considered affected the configuration of spatial plans. The choice of climate metrics and approaches to identifying refugia have large effects in the resulting climate-smart spatial plans, whereas the choice of climate models and emission scenarios have smaller effects. As the configuration of spatial plans depended on climate metrics used, a spatial plan based on a single measure of climate change (e.g., warming) will not necessarily be robust against other measures of climate change (e.g., ocean acidification). We therefore recommend using climate metrics most relevant for the biodiversity and region considered based on a single or multiple climate drivers. To include the uncertainty associated with different climate futures, we recommend using multiple climate models (i.e., an ensemble) and emission scenarios. Finally, we show that the approaches we used to identify climate refugia feature trade-offs between: (1) the degree to which they are climate-smart, and (2) their efficiency in meeting conservation targets. Hence, the choice of approach will depend on the relative value that stakeholders place on climate adaptation. By using this framework, protected areas can be designed with improved longevity and thus safeguard biodiversity against current and future climate change. We hope that the proposed climate-smart framework helps transition conservation planning toward climate-smart approaches.

Biodiversity conservation adaptation to climate change: Protecting the actors or the stage

To be able to protect biodiversity in coming decades, conservation strategies need to consider what sites will be important for species not just today but also in the future. Different methods have been proposed to identify places that will be important for species in the future. Two of the most frequently used methods, ecological niche modeling and climate resilience, have distinct aims. The former focuses on identifying the suitable environmental conditions for species, thus protecting the "actor," namely, the species, whereas the latter seeks to safeguard the "stage," or the landscape in which species occur. We used the two methods to identify climate refugia for 258 forest vertebrates under short- and long-term climatic changes in a biodiversity hotspot, the Appalachian ecoregion of the United States. We also evaluated the spatial congruence of the two approaches for a possible conservation application, that of protecting 30% of the Appalachian region, in line with recent national and international policy recommendations. We detected weak positive correlations between resilience scores and baseline vertebrate richness, estimated with ecological niche models for historical (baseline) climatic conditions. The correlations were stronger for amphibians and mammals than for birds and reptiles. Under climate change scenarios, the correlations between estimated vertebrate richness and resilience were also weakly positive; a positive correlation was detected only for amphibians. Locations with estimated future gain of suitable climatic conditions for vertebrates showed low correlation with resilience. Overall, our results indicate that climate resilience and ecological niche modeling approaches capture different characteristics of projected distributional changes of Appalachian vertebrates. A climate resilience (the stage) approach could be more effective in safeguarding species with low dispersal abilities, whereas an ecological niche modeling (the actor) approach could be more suitable for species with long-distance dispersal capacity because they may be more broadly impacted by climate and less sensitive to geophysical features captured by a climate resilience approach.

Integrating carbon stocks and landscape connectivity for nature-based climate solutions

Actions to protect against biodiversity loss and climate change will require a framework that addresses synergies between these interrelated issues. In this study, we present methods for identifying areas important for the implementation of nature-based climate solutions and biodiversity conservation by intersecting high-resolution spatial data for carbon storage and landscape connectivity. We explored the spatial congruence of carbon and connectivity in Ontario, Canada and examined effectiveness of current protected areas coverage. We found a weak positive relationship between carbon stocks and landscape connectivity; however, our maps revealed large hotspots, with high values of both indices, throughout the boreal forest and northern peatlands and smaller, isolated hotspots, in the settled landscapes of the south. Location of hotspots varied depending on whether we considered forest or soil carbon. Further, our results show that current protected and conserved areas in Ontario only cover 13% of landscapes with the highest values for both carbon storage and connectivity. Protection or restoration of areas that maximize the co-benefits of carbon storage and connectivity would make significant contributions toward ambitious national targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and conserve biodiversity.

Understanding Local Adaptation to Prepare Populations for Climate Change

Adaptation within species to local environments is widespread in nature. Better understanding this local adaptation is critical to conserving biodiversity. However, conservation practices can rely on species’ trait averages or can broadly assume homogeneity across the range to inform management. Recent methodological advances for studying local adaptation provide the opportunity to fine-tune efforts for managing and conserving species. The implementation of these advances will allow us to better identify populations at greatest risk of decline because of climate change, as well as highlighting possible strategies for improving the likelihood of population persistence amid climate change. In the present article, we review recent advances in the study of local adaptation and highlight ways these tools can be applied in conservation efforts. Cutting-edge tools are available to help better identify and characterize local adaptation. Indeed, increased incorporation of local adaptation in management decisions may help meet the imminent demands of managing species amid a rapidly changing world.

Climate adaptation of biodiversity conservation in managed forest landscapes

Conservation of biodiversity in managed forest landscapes needs to be complemented with new approaches given the threat from rapid climate change. Most frameworks for adaptation of biodiversity conservation to climate change include two major strategies. The first is the resistance strategy, which focuses on actions to increase the capacity of species and communities to resist change. The second is the transformation strategy and includes actions that ease the transformation of communities to a set of species that are well adapted to the novel environmental conditions. We suggest a number of concrete actions policy makers and managers can take. Under the resistance strategy, five tools are introduced, including: identifying and protecting forest climate refugia with cold-favored species; reducing the effects of drought by protecting the hydrological network; and actively removing competitors when they threaten cold-favored species. Under the transformation strategy, we suggest three tools, including: enhancing conditions for forest species favored by the new climate, but currently disfavored by forest management, by planting them at suitable sites outside their main range; and increasing connectivity across the landscape to enhance the expansion of warm-favored species to sites that have become suitable. Finally, we suggest applying a landscape perspective and simultaneously managing for both retreating and expanding species. The two different strategies (resistance and transformation) should be seen as complementary ways to maintain a rich biodiversity in future forest ecosystems.

Translating area-based conservation pledges into efficient biodiversity protection outcomes

Ambitious national and global pledges to protect increasing areas of land risk trading conservation effectiveness for convenience of designation. We show that UK conservation areas often lie outside the highest biodiversity priority landscapes, and that systematic conservation planning can improve site selection.

Cunningham et al. comment on the U.K.’s commitment to protect 30% of land by 2030, by identifying priority landscapes for expansion of the current protected area network in the UK using 445 priority species ranges across the country, under two baseline protection definitions to reach this conservation target. They find that expanding the protected area network by initially only including the strictest protected areas would yield much greater representation of threatened species, and propose new considerations for protected area commitments.

Maximizing the effectiveness of national commitments to protected area expansion for conserving biodiversity and ecosystem carbon under climate change

Global commitments to protected area expansion should prioritize opportunities to protect climate refugia and ecosystems which store high levels of irrecoverable carbon, as key components of an effective response to biodiversity loss and climate change. The United States and Canada are responsible for one-sixth of global greenhouse gas emissions but hold extensive natural ecosystems that store globally significant above- and below-ground carbon. Canada has initiated a process of protected area network expansion in concert with efforts at reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, and acknowledged nature-based solutions as a key aspect of climate change mitigation. The US, although not a party to global biodiversity conventions, has recently committed to protecting 30% of its extent by 2030 and achieving the UNFCCC Paris Agreement's mitigation targets. The opportunities afforded by these dual biodiversity conservation and climate commitments require coordinated national and regional policies to ensure that new protected areas maximize biodiversity-focused adaptation and nature-based mitigation opportunities. We address how global commitments can best inform national policy initiatives which build on existing agency mandates for regional planning and species conservation. Previous analyses of global conservation priorities under climate change have been tenuously linked to policy contexts of individual nations and have lacked information on refugia due to limitations of globally available datasets. Comparison and synthesis of predictions from a range of recently developed refugia metrics allow such data to inform planning despite substantial uncertainty arising from contrasting model assumptions and inputs. A case study for endangered species planning for old-forest-associated species in the US Pacific Northwest demonstrates how regional planning can be nested hierarchically within national biodiversity-focused adaptation and nature-based mitigation strategies which integrate refugia, connectivity, and ecosystem carbon metrics to holistically evaluate the role of different land designations and where carbon mitigation and protection of biodiversity's resilience to climate change can be aligned.

Five Steps to Inject Transformative Change into the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework

Accelerating declines in biodiversity and unmet targets in the Convention on Biological Diversity's 2010-2020 Strategic Plan for Biodiversity are stimulating widespread calls for transformative change. Such change includes societal transitions toward sustainability, as well as in specific content of the CBD's draft Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. We summarize research on transformative change and its links to biodiversity conservation, and discuss how it may influence the work of the CBD. We identify five steps to inject transformative change into the design and implementation of a new post-2020 framework: Pay attention to lessons learned from transitions research, plan for climate change, reframe area-based conservation, scale up biodiversity mainstreaming, and increase resources. These actions will transform the very nature of work under the CBD; a convention based on voluntary implementation by countries and facilitated by international administrators and experts must now accommodate a broader range of participants including businesses, Indigenous peoples, and multiple nonstate actors.

Design of Protected Area by Tracking and Excluding the Effects of Climate and Landscape Change: A Case Study Using Neurergus derjugini

This study aimed to use the applications of Ensemble Species Distribution Modelling (eSDM), Geographical Information Systems (GISs), and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) for the design of a protected area (PA) for the critically endangered yellow-spotted mountain newt, Neurergus derjugini, by tracking and excluding the effects of climate and landscape changes in western Iran and northeastern Iraq. Potential recent and future distributions (2050 and 2070) were reconstructed by eSDM using eight algorithms with MRI-CGCM3 and CCSM4 models. The GIS-based MCDA siting procedure was followed inside habitats with high eSDM suitability by eliminating the main roads, cities, high village density, dams, poor vegetation, low stream density, agricultural lands and high ridge density. Then, within the remaining relevant areas, 10 polygons were created as “nominations” for PAs (NPAs). Finally, for 10 different NPAs, the suitability score was ranked based on ratings and weights (analytical hierarchy process) of the number of newt localities, NPA connectivity, NPA shape, NPA habitat suitability in 2070, NPA size, genetic diversity, village density and distance to nearest PAs, cities, and main roads. This research could serve as a modern realistic approach for environmental management to plan conservation areas using a cost-effective and affordable technique.

Global progress in incorporating climate adaptation into land protection for biodiversity since Aichi targets

Climate adaptation strategies are being developed and implemented to protect biodiversity from the impacts of climate change. A well-established strategy involves the identification and addition of new areas for conservation, and most countries agreed in 2010 to expand the global protected area (PA) network to 17% by 2020 (Aichi Biodiversity Target 11). Although great efforts to expand the global PA network have been made, the potential of newly established PAs to conserve biodiversity under future climate change remains unclear at the global scale. Here, we conducted the first global-extent, country-level assessment of the contribution of PA network expansion toward three key land prioritization approaches for biodiversity persistence under climate change: protecting climate refugia, protecting abiotic diversity, and increasing connectivity. These approaches avoid uncertainties of biodiversity predictions under climate change as well as the issue of undescribed species. We found that 51% of the countries created new PAs in locations with lower mean climate velocity (representing better climate refugia) and 58% added PAs in areas with higher mean abiotic diversity compared to the available, non-human-dominated lands not chosen for protection. However, connectivity among PAs declined in 53% of the countries, indicating that many new PAs were located far from existing PAs. Lastly, we identified potential improvements for climate adaptation, showing that 94% of the countries have the opportunity to improve in executing one or more approaches to conserve biodiversity. Most countries (60%) were associated with multiple opportunities, highlighting the need for integrative strategies that target multiple land protection approaches. Our results demonstrate that a global improvement in the protection of climate refugia, abiotic diversity, and connectivity of reserves is needed to complement land protection informed by existing and projected species distributions. Our study also provides a framework for countries to prioritize land protection for climate adaptation using publicly available data.

Rewilding in the face of climate change

Expansion of the global protected-area network has been proposed as a strategy to address threats from accelerating climate change and species extinction. A key step in increasing the effectiveness of such expansion is understanding how novel threats to biodiversity from climate change alter concepts such as rewilding, which have underpinned many proposals for large interconnected reserves. We reviewed potential challenges that climate change poses to rewilding and found that the conservation value of large protected areas persists under climate change. Nevertheless, more attention should be given to protection of microrefugia, macrorefugia, complete environmental gradients, and areas that connect current and future suitable climates and to maintaining ecosystem processes and stabilizing feedbacks via conservation strategies that are resilient to uncertainty regarding climate trends. Because a major element of the threat from climate change stems from its novel geographic patterns, we examined, as an example, the implications for climate-adaptation planning of latitudinal, longitudinal (continental to maritime), and elevational gradients in climate-change exposure across the Yellowstone-to-Yukon region, the locus of an iconic conservation proposal initially designed to conserve wide-ranging carnivore species. In addition to a continued emphasis on conserving intact landscapes, restoration of degraded low-elevation areas within the region is needed to capture sites important for landscape-level climate resilience. Extreme climate exposure projected for boreal North America suggests the need for ambitious goals for expansion of the protected-area network there to include refugia created by topography and ecological features, such as peatlands, whose conservation can also reduce emissions from carbon stored in soil. Qualitative understanding of underlying reserve design rules and the geography of climate-change exposure can strengthen the outcomes of inclusive regional planning processes that identify specific sites for protection.

Clair C, Coristine L, Higgs E, Smith R, Pellatt M, Beaty C, Cheskey E, Cooke SJ, Crawford L, Davis R, Forbes G, Gadallah F(Z, Kendall P, Mandrak N, Moola F, Parker S, Quayle J, Ray JC, Richardson K, Smith K, Snider J, Smol JP, Sutherland WJ, Vallillee A, White L, Woodley A. Emerging issues for protected and conserved areas in Canada

Horizon scanning is increasingly used in conservation to systematically explore emerging policy and management issues. We present the results of a horizon scan of issues likely to impact management of Canadian protected and conserved areas over the next 5–10 years. Eighty-eight individuals participated, representing a broad community of academics, government and nongovernment organizations, and foundations, including policymakers and managers of protected and conserved areas. This community initially identified 187 issues, which were subsequently triaged to 15 horizon issues by a group of 33 experts using a modified Delphi technique. Results were organized under four broad categories: ( i) emerging effects of climate change in protected and conserved areas design, planning, and management (i.e., large-scale ecosystem changes, species translocation, fire regimes, ecological integrity, and snow patterns); ( ii) Indigenous governance and knowledge systems (i.e., Indigenous governance and Indigenous knowledge and Western science); ( iii) integrated conservation approaches across landscapes and seascapes (i.e., connectivity conservation, integrating ecosystem values and services, freshwater planning); and ( iv) early responses to emerging cumulative, underestimated, and novel threats (i.e., management of cumulative impacts, declining insect biomass, increasing anthropogenic noise, synthetic biology). Overall, the scan identified several emerging issues that require immediate attention to effectively reduce threats, respond to opportunities, and enhance preparedness and capacity to react.

High-resolution land value maps reveal underestimation of conservation costs in the United States

The justification and targeting of conservation policy rests on reliable measures of public and private benefits from competing land uses. Advances in Earth system observation and modeling permit the mapping of public ecosystem services at unprecedented scales and resolutions, prompting new proposals for land protection policies and priorities. Data on private benefits from land use are not available at similar scales and resolutions, resulting in a data mismatch with unknown consequences. Here I show that private benefits from land can be quantified at large scales and high resolutions, and that doing so can have important implications for conservation policy models. I developed high-resolution estimates of fair market value of private lands in the contiguous United States by training tree-based ensemble models on 6 million land sales. The resulting estimates predict conservation cost with up to 8.5 times greater accuracy than earlier proxies. Studies using coarser cost proxies underestimate conservation costs, especially at the expensive tail of the distribution. This has led to underestimations of policy budgets by factors of up to 37.5 in recent work. More accurate cost accounting will help policy makers acknowledge the full magnitude of contemporary conservation challenges and can help improve the targeting of public ecosystem service investments.