Climatic, topographic, and anthropogenic factors determine connectivity between current and future climate analogs in North America

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.

Can large-scale tree planting in China compensate for the loss of climate connectivity due to deforestation?

Extensive deforestation has been a major reason for the loss of forest connectivity, impeding species range shifts under current climate change. Over the past decades, the Chinese government launched a series of afforestation and reforestation projects to increase forest cover, yet whether the new forests can compensate for the loss of connectivity due to deforestation-and where future tree planting would be most effective-remains largely unknown. Here, we evaluate changes in climate connectivity across China's forests between 2015 and 2019. We find that China's large-scale tree planting alleviated the negative impacts of forest loss on climate connectivity, improving the extent and probability of climate connectivity by 0-0.2 °C and 0-0.03, respectively. The improvements were particularly obvious for species with short dispersal distances (i.e., 3 km and 10 km). Nevertheless, only ~55 % of the trees planted in this period could serve as stepping stones for species movement. This indicates that focusing solely on the quantitative target of forest coverage without considering the connectivity of forests may miss opportunities in tree planting to facilitate climate-induced range shifts. More attention should be paid to the spatial arrangement of tree plantations and their potential as stepping stones. We then identify priority areas for future tree planting to create effective stepping stones. Our study highlights the potential of large-scale tree planting to facilitate range shifts. Future tree-planting efforts should incorporate the need for species range shifts to achieve more biodiversity conservation benefits under 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.

The exposure of the world's mountains to global change drivers

Global change affects mountain areas at different levels, with some mountains being more exposed to change in climate or environmental conditions and others acting as local refugia. We quantified the exposure of the world's mountains to three drivers of change, climate, land use, and human population density, using two spatial-temporal metrics (velocity and magnitude of change). We estimated the acceleration of change for these drivers by comparing past (1975-2005) vs. future (2020-2050) exposure, and we also compared exposure in lowlands vs. mountains. We found Africa's tropical mountains facing the highest future exposure to multiple drivers of change, thus requiring targeted adaptation and mitigation strategies to preserve biodiversity. European and North America's mountains, in contrast, experience more limited exposure to global change and could act as local refugia for biodiversity. This knowledge can be used to prioritize local-scale interventions and planning long-term monitoring to reduce the risks faced by mountain biodiversity.

Protected areas not likely to serve as steppingstones for species undergoing climate-induced range shifts

Species across the planet are shifting their ranges to track suitable climate conditions in response to climate change. Given that protected areas have higher quality habitat and often harbor higher levels of biodiversity compared to unprotected lands, it is often assumed that protected areas can serve as steppingstones for species undergoing climate-induced range shifts. However, there are several factors that may impede successful range shifts among protected areas, including the distance that must be traveled, unfavorable human land uses and climate conditions along potential movement routes, and lack of analogous climates. Through a species-agnostic lens, we evaluate these factors across the global terrestrial protected area network as measures of climate connectivity, which is defined as the ability of a landscape to facilitate or impede climate-induced movement. We found that over half of protected land area and two-thirds of the number of protected units across the globe are at risk of climate connectivity failure, casting doubt on whether many species can successfully undergo climate-induced range shifts among protected areas. Consequently, protected areas are unlikely to serve as steppingstones for a large number of species under a warming climate. As species disappear from protected areas without commensurate immigration of species suited to the emerging climate (due to climate connectivity failure), many protected areas may be left with a depauperate suite of species under climate change. Our findings are highly relevant given recent pledges to conserve 30% of the planet by 2030 (30 × 30), underscore the need for innovative land management strategies that allow for species range shifts, and suggest that assisted colonization may be necessary to promote species that are adapted to the emerging climate.

Limited co-benefits of protected areas in southwest China under current climate change and human modification

An ambitious new Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework "Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework" has been developed. However, the combined effects of climate change and human modification can undermine the potential benefits of the global post-2020 conservation efforts. The co-benefits of stabilizing the climate, conserving biodiversity, and maintaining intact wilderness areas may help to persuade the general public of the need to quickly expand existing protected areas (PAs). To maximize the co-benefits after 2020, the careful optimization of existing (PAs) network and scientific identification of conservation targets are both essential. Here, we mapped hotspots of biodiversity, climate vulnerability, and wilderness in Southwest China (SWC). By analyzing the representativeness and gaps of the existing PAs network in SWC, we devised post-2020 conservation targets and highlighted their implications for decision-makers. Our results showed that the incongruence between hotspots of different species exists, indicating that habitats suitable for one taxon may not fully harbor other taxa. According to our assessment, the five jurisdictions of SWC have warmed on average by 0.4°C-1.1 °C over the past 60 years alone. In particular, biodiversity hotspots in SWC are undergoing stark climatic changes. We uncovered prominent conservation gaps in SWC's network of PAs, especially in terms of climate vulnerability and biodiversity. Due to their insufficient number and unreasonable spatial distribution, the PAs network in SWC may be not capable of meeting its biodiversity, climate vulnerability, and wilderness conservation objectives. To rectify this, we proposed a 3-step mission: milestone 2025, milestone 2030, and goal 2050, which aims to protect 23%, 28%, and 60% of the terrestrial area in SWC, respectively. Taken together, our study derived conservation priority areas with relatively clear spatial boundaries and importance levels, thus providing detailed, timely information for decision-makers to expand the PAs network and implement conservation measures varying in strictness in post-2020 conservation practice.

Predicting areas important for ecological connectivity throughout Canada

Governments around the world have acknowledged that urgent action is needed to conserve and restore ecological connectivity to help reverse the decline of biodiversity. In this study we tested the hypothesis that functional connectivity for multiple species can be estimated across Canada using a single, upstream connectivity model. We developed a movement cost layer with cost values assigned using expert opinion to anthropogenic land cover features and natural features based on their known and assumed effects on the movement of terrestrial, non-volant fauna. We used Circuitscape to conduct an omnidirectional connectivity analysis for terrestrial landscapes, in which the potential contribution of all landscape elements to connectivity were considered and where source and destination nodes were independent of land tenure. Our resulting map of mean current density provided a seamless estimate of movement probability at a 300 m resolution across Canada. We tested predictions in our map using a variety of independently collected wildlife data. We found that GPS data for individual caribou, wolves, moose, and elk that traveled longer distances in western Canada were all significantly correlated with areas of high current densities. The frequency of moose roadkill in New Brunswick was also positively associated with current density, but our map was not able to predict areas of high road mortality for herpetofauna in southern Ontario. The results demonstrate that an upstream modelling approach can be used to characterize functional connectivity for multiple species across a large study area. Our national connectivity map can help governments in Canada prioritize land management decisions to conserve and restore connectivity at both national and regional scales.

Spatial heterogeneity and temporal stability characterize future climatic refugia in Mediterranean Europe

Climate plays a major role in shaping biodiversity patterns over time and space, with ongoing changes leading to the reorganization of ecosystems, which challenges conservation initiatives. Identifying areas that could serve as possible climate change refugia for future biodiversity is, thus, critical for both conservation and management. Here, we identify potential future climatic refugia within the Euro-Mediterranean biome, which is a global biodiversity hotspot, while accounting for multiple emission climate change projections over the next 50 years. We developed two metrics of climatic variability: temporal stability and spatial heterogeneity. We then used a systematic conservation planning approach to identify climate-based priority areas. While we used a climate-based, species-neutral methodology, we deliberately implemented low climatic velocity thresholds, so that the identified climatic refugia would even be compatible with the needs of species with low dispersal capacity, such as plants. Our projections showed that future climatic refugia would be more frequently observed in mid-altitudes, for gradients with steep elevations, and mainly in the eastern part of the Euro-Mediterranean biome, with possible conflicts with existing land uses and future conservation implications. Climatic, land use, and topography results indicated that only a limited number of refugia would be hosted by high elevation habitats (>1500 m), raising possible concerns about the biodiversity of Mediterranean mountain regions. Our analyses show that the current network of protected areas captures future climatic refugia disproportionally, despite their importance for safeguarding present and future biodiversity in the Mediterranean. Key climatic refugia could limit the impacts of future climate change on biodiversity in mid-altitude and mountainous regions, and should be included in management guidelines for a climate-ready conservation design in the Mediterranean biome.

The Value of Trail Corridors for Bold Conservation Planning

Conservationists are calling for bold strategies to connect wildlands and halt extinctions. A growing number of scientists recommend that 50% of all land must be held in a protected area network to maintain biodiversity. We assessed lands adjacent to the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and Continental Divide Trail (CDT) as possible wildlife corridors connecting protected areas in the American West. We evaluated the connectivity, wildness, and biodiversity values of the lands of each corridor and determined the conservation and land management status. We found that our corridors connect 95 protected areas creating two linear protected area chains from Mexico to Canada. Both the PCT and CDT corridors follow many of the best corridor routes previously found in the literature and hold high wildland conservation values. The American public already owns the majority of land units around the modeled PCT (88%) and CDT (90%) corridor. Therefore, we recommend further analysis of the lands adjacent to recreational trails as wildlife corridors. Employing our methodology on multiple scales could reveal that other recreational trails should be buffered and conserved for wildlife movement.

"No-regrets" pathways for navigating climate change: planning for connectivity with land use, topography, and climate

As both plant and animal species shift their ranges in response to a changing climate, maintaining connectivity between present habitat and suitable habitat in the future will become increasingly important to ensure lasting protection for biodiversity. Because the temporal period commensurate with planning for mid-century change is multi-generational for most species, connectivity designed to facilitate climate adaptation requires pathways with 'stepping-stones' between current and future habitat. These areas should have habitats suitable not only for dispersal, but for all aspects of species lifecycles. We integrated present-day land use, topographic diversity, and projections of shifting climate regimes into a single connectivity modeling approach to identify pathways for mid-century shifts in species ranges. Using Omniscape we identified climate linkages, or areas important for climate change-driven movement, as the areas with more current flow than would be expected in the absence of climate considerations. This approach identified connectivity potential between natural lands in the present climate and natural lands with future analogous climate following topo-climatically diverse routes. We then translated the model output into a strategic framework to improve interpretation and to facilitate a more direct connection with conservation action. Across modified landscapes, pathways important to climate-driven movement were highly coincident with the last remaining present-day linkages, reinforcing their importance. Across unfragmented lands, the presence of climate-adapted pathways helped inform the prioritization of conservation actions in areas where multiple connectivity options still exist. Many climate linkages follow major watercourses along elevational gradients, highlighting the importance of protecting or managing for these natural linear pathways that provide movement routes for climate adaptation. By integrating enduring landscape features with climate projections and present-day land uses, our approach reveals "no-regrets" pathways to plan for a connected landscape in an uncertain future.

Management Foundations for Navigating Ecological Transformation by Resisting, Accepting, or Directing Social–Ecological Change

Despite striking global change, management to ensure healthy landscapes and sustained natural resources has tended to set objectives on the basis of the historical range of variability in stationary ecosystems. Many social–ecological systems are moving into novel conditions that can result in ecological transformation. We present four foundations to enable a transition to future-oriented conservation and management that increases capacity to manage change. The foundations are to identify plausible social–ecological trajectories, to apply upstream and deliberate engagement and decision-making with stakeholders, to formulate management pathways to desired futures, and to consider a portfolio approach to manage risk and account for multiple preferences across space and time. We use the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska as a case study to illustrate how the four foundations address common land management challenges for navigating transformation and deciding when, where, and how to resist, accept, or direct social–ecological change.

Modeling an aspirational connected network of protected areas across North America

Connecting protected areas remains an important global conservation strategy in the face of ongoing and future threats to biodiversity. Amid our growing understanding of how species' distributions will respond to climate change, conservation scientists need to plan for connectivity conservation across entire continents. We modeled multiscale connectivity priorities based on the least human-modified lands between large protected areas of North America using least-cost and circuit theory approaches. We first identified priority corridors between large protected areas, then characterized the network's structure to unveil priority linkages most important for maintaining network- and regional-level connectivity. Agreement between least-cost corridors and current flow varied throughout North America, reflecting permeable landscape conditions and "pinch points" where potential ecological flows may concentrate between protected areas. Priority network-level linkages derived from each approach were similar throughout the continental network (e.g., Rocky Mountains and Canadian boreal), but critical linkages that bridged regional protected-area networks varied. We emphasize the importance of planning for connectivity at continental scales and demonstrate the utility of multiple methods when mapping connectivity priorities across large spatial extents with wide gradients in landscape conditions.

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.

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.

Vulnerabilities of protected lands in the face of climate and human footprint changes

Protected areas (PAs) play a pivotal role in maintaining viable populations of species and minimizing their habitat loss. Globally, there are currently over 200,000 PAs that cover approximately 15% of land area. The post-2020 global biodiversity framework aims to expand this coverage to 30% by 2030. However, focusing only on the percentage coverage of PAs without evaluating their effectiveness may fail to achieve conservation goals. Here, we use a multidimensional approach incorporating species, climate and anthropogenic vulnerabilities to assess the threat levels in over 2500 PAs in China. We identify nearly 10% of PAs as the most threatened PAs in China and about one-fifth PAs as hotspots of climate and anthropogenic vulnerabilities. We also find high climate instability in species vulnerability hotspots, suggesting an elevated likelihood of species' extirpation therein. Our framework could be useful in assessing resiliency of global protected lands and also in selecting near optimal areas for their future expansion.

Sustainability issues in a tropical mega trail

Sustainability is a target that involves many socio-ecological questions, depends on opportunities and combines different initiatives. This can be especially difficult in regions with high biodiversity scores, mega cities, high level of human populations and an intense and long-standing land use. Here, we show how a mega trail, named Atlantic Forest Trail, within the Brazilian Atlantic Forest can join the protection of biodiversity and sustainable tourism through a 4270 km corridor connecting protected areas and crossing a variety of landscapes. Further, we show some initiatives of ongoing biodiversity monitoring, and an analysis of ecological restoration in private lands that can be applied in many regions to improve habitat connectivity for both biodiversity and human use.

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.

Racing against change: understanding dispersal and persistence to improve species' conservation prospects

Climate change is contributing to the widespread redistribution, and increasingly the loss, of species. Geographical range shifts among many species were detected rapidly after predictions of the potential importance of climate change were specified 35 years ago: species are shifting their ranges towards the poles and often to higher elevations in mountainous areas. Early tests of these predictions were largely qualitative, though extraordinarily rapid and broadly based, and statistical tests distinguishing between climate change and other global change drivers provided quantitative evidence that climate change had already begun to cause species’ geographical ranges to shift. I review two mechanisms enabling this process, namely development of approaches for accounting for dispersal that contributes to range expansion, and identification of factors that alter persistence and lead to range loss. Dispersal in the context of range expansion depends on an array of processes, like population growth rates in novel environments, rates of individual species movements to new locations, and how quickly areas of climatically tolerable habitat shift. These factors can be tied together in well-understood mathematical frameworks or modelled statistically, leading to better prediction of extinction risk as climate changes. Yet, species' increasing exposures to novel climate conditions can exceed their tolerances and raise the likelihood of local extinction and consequent range losses. Such losses are the consequence of processes acting on individuals, driven by factors, such as the growing frequency and severity of extreme weather, that contribute local extinction risks for populations and species. Many mechanisms can govern how species respond to climate change, and rapid progress in global change research creates many opportunities to inform policy and improve conservation outcomes in the early stages of the sixth mass extinction.

Landscape resistance mediates native fish species distribution shifts and vulnerability to climate change in riverscapes

A broader understanding of how landscape resistance influences climate change vulnerability for many species is needed, as is an understanding of how barriers to dispersal may impact vulnerability. Freshwater biodiversity is at particular risk, but previous studies have focused on popular cold-water fishes (e.g., salmon, trout, and char) with relatively large body sizes and mobility. Those fishes may be able to track habitat change more adeptly than less mobile species. Smaller, less mobile fishes are rarely represented in studies demonstrating effects of climate change, but depending on their thermal tolerance, they may be particularly vulnerable to environmental change. By revisiting 280 sites over a 20 year interval throughout a warming riverscape, we described changes in occupancy (i.e., site extirpation and colonization probabilities) and assessed the environmental conditions associated with those changes for four fishes spanning a range of body sizes, thermal and habitat preferences. Two larger-bodied trout species exhibited small changes in site occupancy, with bull trout experiencing a 9.2% (95% CI = 8.3%-10.1%) reduction, mostly in warmer stream reaches, and westslope cutthroat trout experiencing a nonsignificant 1% increase. The small-bodied cool water slimy sculpin was originally distributed broadly throughout the network and experienced a 48.0% (95% CI = 42.0%-54.0%) reduction in site occupancy with declines common in warmer stream reaches and areas subject to wildfire disturbances. The small-bodied comparatively warmer water longnose dace primarily occupied larger streams and increased its occurrence in the lower portions of connected tributaries during the study period. Distribution shifts for sculpin and dace were significantly constrained by barriers, which included anthropogenic water diversions, natural step-pools and cascades in steeper upstream reaches. Our results suggest that aquatic communities exhibit a range of responses to climate change, and that improving passage and fluvial connectivity will be important climate adaptation tactics for conserving aquatic biodiversity.

Understanding the Importance of Dynamic Landscape Connectivity

Landscape connectivity is increasingly promoted as a conservation tool to combat the negative effects of habitat loss, fragmentation, and climate change. Given its importance as a key conservation strategy, connectivity science is a rapidly growing discipline. However, most landscape connectivity models consider connectivity for only a single snapshot in time, despite the widespread recognition that landscapes and ecological processes are dynamic. In this paper, we discuss the emergence of dynamic connectivity and the importance of including dynamism in connectivity models and assessments. We outline dynamic processes for both structural and functional connectivity at multiple spatiotemporal scales and provide examples of modeling approaches at each of these scales. We highlight the unique challenges that accompany the adoption of dynamic connectivity for conservation management and planning in the context of traditional conservation prioritization approaches. With the increased availability of time series and species movement data, computational capacity, and an expanding number of empirical examples in the literature, incorporating dynamic processes into connectivity models is more feasible than ever. Here, we articulate how dynamism is an intrinsic component of connectivity and integral to the future of connectivity science.

A review of the challenges and opportunities for restoring animal-mediated pollination of native plants

Ecological restoration is increasingly implemented to reverse habitat loss and concomitant declines in biological diversity. Typically, restoration success is evaluated by measuring the abundance and/or diversity of a single taxon. However, for a restoration to be successful and persistent, critical ecosystem functions such as animal-mediated pollination must be maintained. In this review, we focus on three aspects of pollination within ecological restorations. First, we address the need to measure pollination directly in restored habitats. Proxies such as pollinator abundance and richness do not always accurately assess pollination function. Pollen supplementation experiments, pollen deposition studies, and pollen transport networks are more robust methods for assessing pollination function within restorations. Second, we highlight how local-scale management and landscape-level factors may influence pollination within restorations. Local-scale management actions such as prescribed fire and removal of non-native species can have large impacts on pollinator communities and ultimately on pollination services. In addition, landscape context including proximity and connectivity to natural habitats may be an important factor for land managers and conservation practitioners to consider to maximize restoration success. Third, as climate change is predicted to be a primary driver of future loss in biodiversity, we discuss the potential effects climate change may have on animal-mediated pollination within restorations. An increased mechanistic understanding of how climate change affects pollination and incorporation of climate change predictions will help practitioners design stable, functioning restorations into the future.

Human land uses reduce climate connectivity across North America

Climate connectivity, the ability of a landscape to promote or hinder the movement of organisms in response to a changing climate, is contingent on multiple factors including the distance organisms need to move to track suitable climate over time (i.e. climate velocity) and the resistance they experience along such routes. An additional consideration which has received less attention is that human land uses increase resistance to movement or alter movement routes and thus influence climate connectivity. Here we evaluate the influence of human land uses on climate connectivity across North America by comparing two climate connectivity scenarios, one considering climate change in isolation and the other considering climate change and human land uses. In doing so, we introduce a novel metric of climate connectivity, 'human exposure', that quantifies the cumulative exposure to human activities that organisms may encounter as they shift their ranges in response to climate change. We also delineate potential movement routes and evaluate whether the protected area network supports movement corridors better than non-protected lands. We found that when incorporating human land uses, climate connectivity decreased; climate velocity increased on average by 0.3 km/year and cumulative climatic resistance increased for ~83% of the continent. Moreover, ~96% of movement routes in North America must contend with human land uses to some degree. In the scenario that evaluated climate change in isolation, we found that protected areas do not support climate corridors at a higher rate than non-protected lands across North America. However, variability is evident, as many ecoregions contain protected areas that exhibit both more and less representation of climate corridors compared to non-protected lands. Overall, our study indicates that previous evaluations of climate connectivity underestimate climate change exposure because they do not account for human impacts.

Tradeoffs in the value of biodiversity feature and cost data in conservation prioritization

Decision-support tools are commonly used to maximize return on investments (ROI) in conservation. We evaluated how the relative value of information on biodiversity features and land cost varied with data structure and variability, attributes of focal species and conservation targets, and habitat suitability thresholds for contrasting bird communities in the Pacific Northwest of North America. Specifically, we used spatial distribution maps for 20 bird species, land values, and an integer linear programming model to prioritize land units (1 km²) that met conservation targets at the lowest estimated cost (hereafter ‘efficiency’). Across scenarios, the relative value of biodiversity data increased with conservation targets, as higher thresholds for suitable habitat were applied, and when focal species occurred disproportionately on land of high assessed value. Incorporating land cost generally improved planning efficiency, but at diminishing rates as spatial variance in biodiversity features relative to land cost increased. Our results offer a precise, empirical demonstration of how spatially-optimized planning solutions are influenced by spatial variation in underlying feature layers. We also provide guidance to planners seeking to maximize efficiency in data acquisition and resolve potential trade-offs when setting targets and thresholds in financially-constrained, spatial planning efforts aimed at maximizing ROI in biodiversity conservation.

National contributions to global ecosystem values

Current conservation templates prioritize biogeographic regions with high intensity ecosystem values, such as exceptional species richness or threat. Intensity-based targets are an important consideration in global efforts, but they do not capture all available opportunities to conserve ecosystem values, including those that accrue in low intensity over large areas. We assess six globally-significant ecosystem values-intact wilderness, freshwater availability, productive marine environments, breeding habitat for migratory wildlife, soil carbon storage, and latitudinal potential for range shift in the face of climate change-to highlight opportunities for high-impact broadly-distributed contributions to global conservation. Nations can serve as a cohesive block of policy that can profoundly influence conservation outcomes. Contributions to global ecosystem values that exceed what is predicted by a nation's area alone, can give rise to countries with the capacity to act as 'conservation superpowers', such as Canada and Russia. For these conservation superpowers, a relatively small number of national policies can have environmental repercussions for the rest of the world.

Conserving terrestrial linkages that connect natural landscapes of the Korean Peninsula

Human-induced land degradation fragments natural ecosystems, hinders ecological processes, and threatens biodiversity. Maintaining or restoring ecological flows across landscapes through landscape linkages may provide a solution. Here, we identify a peninsula-wide ecological connectivity network for the Korean Peninsula using two linkage mapping models. We found three major north-south axes of connectivity traversing the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which emerged as an important east-west linkage. Only 7% of the highest-ranked connections are currently secured by protected areas. We found 120 linkages in North and South Korea that are intersected by road networks consisting of motorways and trunk roads under both models. These locations should be the focus of immediate attention for conservation planners, as well as 274 and 1130 additional road-impacted linkages under one model or the other. The results can be used for policy support, and potentially as a basis for the two countries to engage in discussions about ecosystem health and climate change adaptation. The approach presented here can also be efficiently used to assess and map natural landscape linkages.