Climate change and the outdoor regional living plant collections: an example from mainland Portugal

Abstract

Climate change threatens not only plant species occurring naturally, but also impacts on regional living plant collections, which play an important role in ex situ conservation strategies. In the last few years, several global circulation models have been used to predict different global climate change scenarios. Due to their coarse resolutions, and while more detailed regional approaches are not available, downscaling techniques have been proposed, as a very simple first approach to increase detail. We analysed seven sites on mainland Portugal with potential for species conservation (four botanic gardens and three universities), in the light of downscaled climate change scenarios, using an environmental envelope approach and a predefined bioclimatic neighbourhood for each site. Thresholds for the bioclimatic neighbourhood were based on Rivas-Martínez’s Bioclimatic Classification of the Earth. For each site, the expected geographical shift of its original bioclimatic neighbourhood (1950–2000) was mapped for 2020, 2050 and 2080. Analysing those shifts enabled us to delineate knowledge-transfer paths between sites, according to the analysed scenarios. We concluded that, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change A2 scenario, all considered sites will be outside the predefined bioclimatic neighbourhood by 2080, while according to the B2 scenario all of them will be inside that neighbourhood, although sometimes marginally so. Therefore, the implementation of global sustainability measures as considered in the B2 scenario family can be of great importance in order to delay significantly the impacts of climate change, giving extra time for the adaptation of the outdoor regional living plant collections.