The Threat of Climate Change and Land Use: Scientists Assess Ecosystems at Risk

Scientists have come up with a new approach to measure the combined exposure of species to both climate and land use change. The findings could be useful for better assessing which areas are most vulnerable to losses in biodiversity and ecosystem function.

"By assessing climate and land use changes simultaneously, we found a substantially greater estimate of species exposure to global change threats than either land use or climate change alone," said Alejandro Ordonez of Aarhus University in a news release. "For example, in areas where climate and land use change will be slower, species may be able to persist in place and adapt to the changes, or move into new suitable habitats. In contrast, the areas where climate change and land use are accelerating will create the greatest threats to ecological communities, and ecosystems may not be able to keep up."

In order to learn a bit more about which places are most vulnerable, the researchers examined the combined effects of climate and land use change predicted by the mid-21^st century.  They integrated both future climate change and intensifying land use threats, and found that a different set of conservation priorities emerge than if one considers risk from climate change alone.

"We know that the impacts of both climate change and land use will be highly localized, which means that management and adaptation-planning strategies must be flexible to account for the interactions of both," said Ordonez. "In our study, we use two regions to highlight how a set of broad-scale management strategies and interventions that can be useful for conservation decision-making, and to assess where and which adaptation efforts are most likely to be successful under unique combinations of risks due to climate and land use change."

The findings reveal regions exposed to high rates of climate change and reductions in forest or rangelands should be prime targets for protection efforts. That said, potential reserve areas should be evaluated carefully given limited conservation resources.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Climate Change.