Abstract
AbstractAimClimate change is pressing extra strain on the already degraded forest ecosystem in Tanzania. However, it is mostly unknown how climate change will affect the distribution of forests in the future. We aimed to model the impacts of climate change on natural forests to help inform national‐level conservation and mitigation strategies.LocationTanzania.MethodsWe conducted maximum entropy (MaxEnt) modelling to simulate forest habitat suitability using the Tanzanian national forest inventory survey (1,307 occurrences) and environmental data. Changes in forest habitats were simulated under two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) emission scenarios RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 for 2055 and 2085.ResultsThe results indicate that climate change will threaten forest communities, especially fragmented strips of montane forests. Even under optimistic emission scenario, the extent of montane forest is projected to almost halve by 2085, intersecting many biodiversity hotspots across the Eastern Arc Mountains. Similarly, climate change is predicted to threaten microhabitat forests (i.e. thickets), with losses exceeding 70% by 2085 (RCP8.5). Other forest habitats are predicted to decrease (lowland forest and woodland) representing essential ecological networks, whereas suitable habitats for carbon‐rich mangroves are predicted to expand by more than 40% at both scenarios.ConclusionsClimate change will impact forests by accelerating habitat loss, and fragmentation and the remaining land suitable for forests will also be subject to pressures associated with rising demand for food and biofuels. These changes are likely to increase the probability of adverse impacts to the country's indigenous flora and fauna. Our findings, therefore, call for a shift in conservation efforts, focusing on (i) the enhanced management of existing protected areas that can absorb the impacts of future climate change, and (ii) expanding conservation efforts into newly suitable regions through effective land use planning and land reclamation, helping to preserve and enhance forest connectivity between fragmented patches.
Highlights
Tropical forests form the most abundant terrestrial reservoir of carbon storage and biodiversity (Newmark, 2006), but have experienced climate change impact, deforestation and habitat fragmentation (Bonan, 2008; Gibbs et al, 2010)
We addressed the following research questions: (1) What are the vital climatic factors that affect the distribution of forest types based on dominant tree species in Tanzania? (2) What are the impacts of climate change on the distribution of the prevalent tree species habitats? (3) What are the implications for changes in the distribution of forest habitats on the conservation of globally significant indigenous flora and fauna?
The results reveal that climate change will threaten forests at various scales: forests with a narrow geographical range occurring at high altitude will experience more loss of their current habitat in the future
Summary
Tropical forests form the most abundant terrestrial reservoir of carbon storage and biodiversity (Newmark, 2006), but have experienced climate change impact, deforestation and habitat fragmentation (Bonan, 2008; Gibbs et al, 2010). Global initiatives and commitments are considering African tropical forests as critical components of climate change mitigation strategies such as the Bonn Challenge on Forest landscape restoration (FLR) (Seidl et al, 2017), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) (Romijn, Herold, Kooistra, Murdiyarso, & Verchot, 2012), the Rio + 20 land degradation neutrality (Grainger, 2015), Aichi Target 15 on the restoration of degraded ecosystems (Tobón et al, 2017) and the 2030 agenda of the United Nations for Sustainable development goals (SDGs) 13 and 15 (Swamy, Drazen, Johnson, & Bukoski, 2017) To ensure that these strategies are successful and enable effective conservation, it is essential to establish a baseline in terms of forest habitat extent and resilience to climate change pressures (Clark, Gelfand, Woodall, & Zhu, 2014; Verdone & Seidl, 2017). We addressed the following research questions: (1) What are the vital climatic factors that affect the distribution of forest types based on dominant tree species in Tanzania? (2) What are the impacts of climate change on the distribution of the prevalent tree species habitats? (3) What are the implications for changes in the distribution of forest habitats on the conservation of globally significant indigenous flora and fauna?
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