Scientists Create New World Map to Assess Vulnerability to Climate Change

Climate change is affecting our planet. Now, though, scientists have found a way to help predict how it will impact the world's ecosystems. They've created a map that identifies Earths' most vulnerable and least vulnerable areas when it comes to climate change.

In order to create this vulnerability map, the researchers examined the relationship of two metrics: how intact an ecosystem is, and how stable the ecosystem is going to be under predictions of future climate change. This allowed them to create a rating system with four general categories for the world's terrestrial regions.

The map showed that ecosystems with highly intact vegetation and high relative climate stability are the best locations for future protected areas; they have the best chance of retaining species as the climate changes. In contrast, ecosystems with low levels of vegetation and high levels of climate stability could be future targets for habitat restoration. Regions with low levels of vegetation and low climate stability, though, would require the most amount of investment to restore.

"We need to realize that climate change is going to impact ecosystems both directly and indirectly in a variety of ways and we can't keep on assuming that all adaptation actions are suitable everywhere," said James Watson, one of the researchers, in a news release. "The fact that there are only limited funds out there and we need to start to be clever in our investments in adaptation strategies around the world. The analysis and map in this study is a means of bringing clarity to complicated decisions on where limited resources will do the most good."

The new map shows that the most vulnerable regions to climate change are southern and southeastern Asia, western and central Europe, eastern South America and southern Australia. This, surprisingly, differs from previous climate change exposure assessments that were only based on climate change exposure. These previous assessments indicated that the most vulnerable regions were Africa, northern South America and northern Australia.

The findings are extremely important for targeting conservation efforts in the future. It's crucial to understand exactly which ecosystems will be most severely impacted by climate change.

"Effective conservation strategies must anticipate not only how species and habitats will cope with future climate change, but how humans will respond to these challenges," said John Robinson, Executive Vice President for Conservation and Science, in a news release. "To that end, maintaining the integrity of the world's ecosystems will be the most important means of safeguarding the natural world and our own future."

The findings are published in the journal Nature Climate Change.