Assessing biophysical and socio-economic impacts of climate change on regional avian biodiversity

Simon Kapitza,Payal Bal,Tom Kompas,Nick Golding,Natasha C R Cadenhead,Brendan A Wintle,Pham Van Ha

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-82474-z

Simon Kapitza, Payal Bal + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-82474-z

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Abstract

Climate change threatens biodiversity directly by influencing biophysical variables that drive species’ geographic distributions and indirectly through socio-economic changes that influence land use patterns, driven by global consumption, production and climate. To date, no detailed analyses have been produced that assess the relative importance of, or interaction between, these direct and indirect climate change impacts on biodiversity at large scales. Here, we apply a new integrated modelling framework to quantify the relative influence of biophysical and socio-economically mediated impacts on avian species in Vietnam and Australia and we find that socio-economically mediated impacts on suitable ranges are largely outweighed by biophysical impacts. However, by translating economic futures and shocks into spatially explicit predictions of biodiversity change, we now have the power to analyse in a consistent way outcomes for nature and people of any change to policy, regulation, trading conditions or consumption trend at any scale from sub-national to global.

Highlights

Climate change threatens biodiversity directly by influencing biophysical variables that drive species’ geographic distributions and indirectly through socio-economic changes that influence land use patterns, driven by global consumption, production and climate
Direct biophysical impacts dominate changing range sizes. For birds in both regions, we forecast major declines in ecologically suitable ranges, with severity of loss scaling with the severity of climate change (Fig. 2)
In Australia, mean suitable range decline under both pathways is not predicted to be as severe as in Vietnam and a smaller number of species is predicted to lose more than half of their suitable range

Summary

Introduction

Climate change threatens biodiversity directly by influencing biophysical variables that drive species’ geographic distributions and indirectly through socio-economic changes that influence land use patterns, driven by global consumption, production and climate. No detailed analyses have been produced that assess the relative importance of, or interaction between, these direct and indirect climate change impacts on biodiversity at large scales. Analyses that couple direct biophysical impacts on species with indirect socio-economic impacts via consumption, commodity, and land use change are sorely needed to fill important gaps in our knowledge of interactions between land use and climate change[10], to foster a more holistic understanding of the impacts of climate change, and to support the design of cross-sectoral adaptation and mitigation s trategies[13]. Suitable ranges: SDM change impacts on the distribution and extent of suitable ranges for avian species in Vietnam and Australia (Fig. 1)

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