Past, Present, and Future Climate Change: Can Palaeoecology Help Manage a Warming World? - Biodiversity Conservation and Environmental Change - page 113

Assessing conservation capacity and vulnerability to climate change is a first step in plan-
ning climate-change integrated conservation at the landscape level (Dawson et al. 2011, Gill-
son et al. 2013). Vulnerability includes the rate of climate change (exposure), which differs, for
example, with latitude, and depends on the influence of regional climate systems and topo-
graphic relief. This determines the range of available microclimates and therefore the resil-
ience of populations to climate change. Landscape conservation capacity attributes include
the percentage of area protected, and the connectivity and condition of the land outside pro-
tected areas. Evaluating landscapes in terms of these axes can help in deciding what empha-
sis to place on expanding the protected area network, enhancing heterogeneity, restoring
and managing connectivity of land outside of protected areas, or monitoring and managing
threatened species (Figure 5.12).
Reducing the impacts of stressors other than climate change will help to enhance resili-
ence, and the suite of conservation interventions used must remain flexible and adaptive in
order to respond to conditions of high uncertainty, emerging knowledge, societal needs, and
environmental changes (Gillson and Marchant 2014). The link between environment and

Resilient: low
management
intervention

Susceptible: habitat-
and species-focused
management
intervention

Maintain
connectivity and
permeability Maximize abiotic

diversity (e.g.,
through strategic
expansion of litho-,
geo-, and hydrological
range)

Prevent
stressors that
degrade habitat,
and biodiversity

Monitor, and manage for
endemic, rare and
specialist species

Enhance landscape
heterogenetiy (e.g.,
grazing, burning, addition
of water holes, and
management of riverine and
wetland areas)

Expand
protected areas
Improve connectivity
Restore matrix,
encourage uses that
foster permeability, and
biodiversity
Control biotic
stressors (e.g.,
invasives)

Resilient: habitat-
and species - focused
management
intervention

Sensitive: intensive
management inter-
vention or
abandonment

Topographically varaiable,
and low climate velocity

Landscape
vulnerability

Topographically unvaried,
and high climate velocity

Figure 5.12 A climate-change integrated conservation strategy based on two axes of concern.
Landscape conservation capacity attributes (percentage protected areas, connectivity, and condition of
the land outside of protected areas (the matrix)) and landscape vulnerability (exposure to climate
change and topographic relief) generate four principal conditions of varying landscape sensitivity and
required level of management intervention and suite of conservation tools (Gillson et al. 2013).
Reproduced with permission from Elsevier.