Prioritizing the protection of climate refugia : designing a climate-ready protected area network

Victoria Graham, John B. Baumgartner, Linda J. Beaumont, Manuel Esperón-Rodríguez, Alana Grech

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

31 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Protected areas are the primary strategy for maintaining natural landscapes and separating biodiversity features from preventable anthropogenic threats. The Convention on Biological Diversity calls for the coverage of at least 17% of land by protected areas, and the strategic prioritization of important biodiversity areas. Using the spatially explicit reserve design software, Marxan, this study combines climate refugia modelled under future climates in the year 2070 and bioregions to identify priority sites for protected area expansion under climate change in the state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Priority sites for new protected areas that meet bioregion and climate refugia targets were identified in central-western, northeast and patches of southeast NSW. Seven existing parks, including Kosciuszko National Park, overlapped with regions identified repeatedly as climate refugia under 12 future climate scenarios. The recommendations from this study support policy-makers in prioritizing the protection of biodiversity under a changing and uncertain climate.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2588-2606
Number of pages19
JournalJournal of Environmental Planning and Management
Volume62
Issue number14
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019

Open Access - Access Right Statement

©2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor &Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

Keywords

  • biodiversity
  • climatic changes
  • conservation of natural resources
  • natural areas

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