Habitat availability disproportionally amplifies climate change risks for lowland compared to alpine species

Abstract

Climate-driven range dynamics of species will interact with land use patterns that have reduced and fragmented habitat types needed for species’ survival. This interaction could either amplify or mitigate the threats to species from climate change, but has so far been little explored. Here, we investigate whether shifts of suitable areas under future climatic conditions would increase or decrease the match between potential climatic ranges and the availability of appropriate habitat types. Using Central Europe (Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, southern Germany, northern Italy) as study region, we applied “climatic” species distribution models to 51 species from three taxonomic groups (butterflies, grasshoppers, vascular plants) that are bound to natural or semi-natural habitats of either low or high elevations (i.e. those that mainly occur below or above the tree line) and pruned their distribution to appropriate habitats to predict species’ current and future ranges in Central Europe. We found that while the potential climatic ranges of most species shrink under a warmer climate, the (proportional) match with appropriate habitat types remains largely unchanged for lowland species, but generally increases for species of high elevation, especially for plants and butterflies. The observed pattern can be explained by a decrease of land use intensity towards higher elevations. The detected buffer effect of land use patterns for alpine species might, however, vanish in the long run as both climate and land-use interests may modify the spatial habitat pattern itself. We conclude that adjustment of land use practices by reducing the intensity in lowland areas, but maintaining moderate use at higher elevations appears the most sensible long-term strategy to reduce climate change effects on central European biodiversity.