Abstract
ContextFor many organisms, responses to climate change (CC) will be affected by land-use and land-cover changes (LULCC). However, the extent to which LULCC is concurrently considered in climate change vulnerability assessments (CCVAs) is unclear.ObjectivesWe identify trends in inclusion of LULCC and CC in vulnerability assessments of species and the direction and magnitude of their combined effect on biodiversity. Further, we examine the effect size of LULCC and CC in driving changes in “currencies” of response to CC, such as distribution, abundance and survival.MethodsWe conducted a systematic literature review of articles published in the last 30 years that focused on CCVA and accounted for impacts of both CC and LULCC.ResultsAcross 116 studies, 34% assumed CC and LULCC would act additively, while 66% allowed for interactive effects. The majority of CCVAs reported similar effect sizes for CC and LULCC, although they affected different CCVA currencies. Only 14% of the studies showed larger effects of CC than of LULCC. Another 14% showed larger effects of LULCC than CC, specifically for dispersal, population viability, and reproduction, which tend to be strongly affected by fragmentation and disturbance. Although most studies found that LULCC and CC had negative effects on species currencies, in some cases effects were neutral or even positive.ConclusionsCCVAs that incorporate LULCC provided a better account of drivers of vulnerability, and highlight aspects of drivers that are generally more amenable to on-the-ground management intervention than CCVAs that focus on CC alone.
Highlights
Climate change (CC) is a major driver of biodiversity change, alongside concurrent impacts of land-use and land-cover change (LULCC), invasive species, pollution and overexploitation (IPBES 2019)
climate change vulnerability assessments (CCVAs) measure or estimate responses to a variety of currencies, including: 1) absolute changes in distribution or population size, 2) probability of extinction, or 3) indices or relative measurements of changes in distribution, population, or extinction risk (Pacifici et al 2015). These currencies can be assessed by CCVA frameworks that rely on different methodological approaches (Pacifici et al 2015; Wheatley et al 2017)
To define search terms that could correspond to currencies in CCVA, we did a screening of relevant texts in ecology, conservation biology, animal behavior, etc. (See Appendix I for a brief search on the importance of CCVA and the details on the search method)
Summary
Climate change (CC) is a major driver of biodiversity change, alongside concurrent impacts of land-use and land-cover change (LULCC), invasive species, pollution and overexploitation (IPBES 2019). CC and LULCC shape niches and geographical distributions of species, their persistence and extinction probability, and the processes through which species interact with their environment and with each other (Pacifici et al 2017). Climate change vulnerability assessments (CCVAs) typically define vulnerability as a function of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity (Williams et al 2008; Foden and Young 2016). Moreno-Mateos Department of Landscape Architecture and Department of Organismal and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. D. Moreno-Mateos Basque Center for Climate Change - BC3 / Ikerbasque Foundation, Bizkaia, Spain
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