The past protecting the future

Abstract

PurposeIn answer to the urgent need to adapt conservation strategies and approaches to climate change, the purpose of this paper is to locate the climatically stable forests in West and Central Africa and to assess whether they overlap with the existing network of protected areas and if not, to prioritize them for protection.Design/methodology/approachWith ongoing global warming, rain forest will survive where locally soil moisture content remains high compensating for the regional drought stress. As a proxy for a soil moisture‐driven model, rainfall >2,000 mm, altitude >500 m and strong relief (standard deviation in elevation data pixels) were overlapped in a GIS analysis to locate the climatically stable forest within the present continuous forest of Central Africa and within the degraded forest of West Africa. As a means of verification, the biodiversity was measured in and outside the identified areas in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea as high levels of biodiversity are related to the survival and stability of the forest in the past. Biodiversity was calculated (measured as Fisher‐α diversity) for all trees (dbh >5 cm) on 66 transects (200 × 5 m).FindingsThe forest areas identified as climatically stable in the GIS analysis showed a higher biodiversity than the forest outside these areas (student T‐test: P<0.000035, stable = 54.7 and unstable = 33.7), supporting the validity of the model. Mapping the results of the GIS query showed that most of the climatically stable forests in West and Central Africa are located outside the park systems, and that it is already too late to protect the climatically stable forest in West Africa as almost nothing is left of it.Originality/valueWedged in between large‐scale drought tolerant ecosystems the African rain forest is most vulnerable to global climate change. Knowing which parts are climatically stable and resilient helps to set and focus conservation priorities and efforts. This approach is a powerful tool which has helped to identify areas with a high‐conservation priority in Africa.