Abstract
Systematic conservation planning efforts typically focus on protecting current patterns of biodiversity. Climate change is poised to shift species distributions, reshuffle communities, and alter ecosystem functioning. In such a dynamic environment, lands selected to protect today's biodiversity may fail to do so in the future. One proposed approach to designing reserve networks that are robust to climate change involves protecting the diversity of abiotic conditions that in part determine species distributions and ecological processes. A set of abiotically diverse areas will likely support a diversity of ecological systems both today and into the future, although those two sets of systems might be dramatically different. Here, we demonstrate a conservation planning approach based on representing unique combinations of abiotic factors. We prioritize sites that represent the diversity of soils, topographies, and current climates of the Columbia Plateau. We then compare these sites to sites prioritized to protect current biodiversity. This comparison highlights places that are important for protecting both today's biodiversity and the diversity of abiotic factors that will likely determine biodiversity patterns in the future. It also highlights places where a reserve network designed solely to protect today's biodiversity would fail to capture the diversity of abiotic conditions and where such a network could be augmented to be more robust to climate-change impacts.
Highlights
Biological reserves were originally established on an opportunistic, ad hoc basis
Using the Columbia Plateau ecoregion in the northwestern United States as a case study, we demonstrate how abiotic facets can be integrated into the conservation-planning process as a method for addressing climate change in traditional planning
Defining abiotic facets We described the abiotic diversity of the Columbia Plateau ecoregion using two topographic variables, three soil variables, and four climatic variables
Summary
Biological reserves were originally established on an opportunistic, ad hoc basis. As a result, many of the early reserves were situated in remote, high-elevation regions on less productive soils [1]. In the past 30 years, conservation scientists have attempted to correct this bias through systematic planning methods that better represent species, communities, and ecosystems [2] These methods involve selecting land for reserves to maximize representation of conservation elements (e.g., priority species, ecosystems, or other aspects of biodiversity) [3] while minimizing the number of sites required or the costs to conserve them [2,4]. This general approach to conservation planning can efficiently represent particular aspects of current biodiversity in reserve networks, it may fail to protect biodiversity in a changing climate [5]. Planning approaches that focus on current species occurrences may fail to protect biodiversity in the future
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