Abstract
Conservationists must develop new strategies and adapt existing tools to address the consequences of anthropogenic climate change. To support statewide climate change adaptation, we developed a framework for assessing climate change vulnerability of California's at-risk birds and integrating it into the existing California Bird Species of Special Concern list. We defined climate vulnerability as the amount of evidence that climate change will negatively impact a population. We quantified climate vulnerability by scoring sensitivity (intrinsic characteristics of an organism that make it vulnerable) and exposure (the magnitude of climate change expected) for each taxon. Using the combined sensitivity and exposure scores as an index, we ranked 358 avian taxa, and classified 128 as vulnerable to climate change. Birds associated with wetlands had the largest representation on the list relative to other habitat groups. Of the 29 state or federally listed taxa, 21 were also classified as climate vulnerable, further raising their conservation concern. Integrating climate vulnerability and California's Bird Species of Special Concern list resulted in the addition of five taxa and an increase in priority rank for ten. Our process illustrates a simple, immediate action that can be taken to inform climate change adaptation strategies for wildlife.
Highlights
Climate change poses significant threats to global biodiversity [1]
For evaluating climate change vulnerability, we expanded the list of BSSC nominated taxa to include (1) taxa with ‘‘high’’ climate change vulnerability scores as defined by the U.S national assessment (12 taxa; [17]), (2) taxa projected to suffer a 50% or greater decrease in their California range between 2060 and 2099 under the highest emissions scenario modeled by Audubon California (8 taxa; [18]), or 50% decrease in habitat suitability in California by 2070 under an average of two emission scenarios (4 species; PRBO unpubl. data), (3) taxa that were identified as potentially vulnerable to climate change based on expert opinion (23 taxa), and (4) taxa listed as state and/or federally threatened and endangered or recently delisted (29 taxa)
While one approach would have been to use just one of these existing ranking schemes, we found that because these schemes were generally designed to rank all organisms, they were so broad that they incorporated information that was irrelevant for birds or failed to fully incorporate more detailed information that is available for birds in California
Summary
Climate change poses significant threats to global biodiversity [1]. Our understanding of these threats is in part based on synthetic reviews that summarize the effects that climate change has had on natural systems [2,3,4] and on the rapidly growing number of models that provide information on where species, communities, or climatic conditions are predicted to occur under various climate change scenarios [5,6,7]. There are general management principles and recommendations for adapting management to the projected consequences of climate change [8,9]. Such general principles may fail to provide clear on-the-ground guidance in the absence of information about which species and ecosystems are most vulnerable to climate change and how these vulnerabilities interact with non-climate threats and stressors [10]
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