Climate velocity in the ocean and its implications for conservation

Abstract Expanding protected area networks and enhancing their capacities is currently one avenue at the forefront of efforts to conserve and restore global biodiversity. Climate and habitat loss resulting from land use interact synergistically to undermine the potential benefits of protected areas (PAs). Targeting conservation, adaptation and mitigation efforts requires an understanding of patterns of climate and land-use change within the current arrangement of PAs, and how these might change in the future. In this paper, we provide this understanding using predicted rates of temporal and spatial displacement of future climate and land use globally and within PAs. We show that ~ 47% of the world’s PAs—10.6% of which are under restrictive management—are located in regions that will likely experience both climate stress and land-use instability by 2050. The vast majority of these PAs are also distributed across moist biomes and in high conservation value regions, and fall into less-restrictive management categories. The differential impacts of combined land use and climate velocity across protected biomes indicate that climate and land-use change may have fundamentally different ecological and management consequences at multiple scales. Taken together, our findings can inform spatially adaptive natural resource management and actions to achieve sustainable development and biodiversity goals.

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Shrubline but not treeline advance matches climate velocity in montane ecosystems of south-central Alaska

Global Change Biology ◽

10.1111/gcb.13207 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 22 (5) ◽

pp. 1841-1856 ◽

Cited By ~ 33

Author(s):

Roman J. Dial ◽

T. Scott Smeltz ◽

Patrick F. Sullivan ◽

Christina L. Rinas ◽

Katriina Timm ◽

...

Keyword(s):

South Central ◽

Climate Velocity

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Species traits and climate velocity explain geographic range shifts in an ocean-warming hotspot

Ecology Letters ◽

10.1111/ele.12474 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 18 (9) ◽

pp. 944-953 ◽

Cited By ~ 187

Author(s):

Jennifer M. Sunday ◽

Gretta T. Pecl ◽

Stewart Frusher ◽

Alistair J. Hobday ◽

Nicole Hill ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Species Traits ◽

Geographic Range ◽

Ocean Warming ◽

Range Shifts ◽

Climate Velocity ◽

Geographic Range Shifts

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Climate velocity and the future global redistribution of marine biodiversity

Nature Climate Change ◽

10.1038/nclimate2769 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 83-88 ◽

Cited By ~ 190

Author(s):

Jorge García Molinos ◽

Benjamin S. Halpern ◽

David S. Schoeman ◽

Christopher J. Brown ◽

Wolfgang Kiessling ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Marine Biodiversity ◽

The Future ◽

Climate Velocity

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Climate velocity reveals increasing exposure of deep-ocean biodiversity to future warming

Nature Climate Change ◽

10.1038/s41558-020-0773-5 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 10 (6) ◽

pp. 576-581 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Isaac Brito-Morales ◽

David S. Schoeman ◽

Jorge García Molinos ◽

Michael T. Burrows ◽

Carissa J. Klein ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Deep Ocean ◽

Future Warming ◽

Climate Velocity

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The realised velocity of climate change reveals remarkable idiosyncrasy of species’ distributional shifts

10.1101/823930 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

William D. Pearse ◽

T. Jonathan Davies

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Evolutionary History ◽

Changing Climate ◽

Recent Climate ◽

Specific Variation ◽

Broad Variety ◽

Species Responses ◽

Climate Velocity ◽

Distributional Shifts ◽

Null Expectation

To date, our understanding of how species have shifted in response to recent climate warming has been based on a few studies with a limited number of species. Here we present a comprehensive, global overview of species’ distributional responses to changing climate across a broad variety of taxa (animals, plants, and fungi). We characterise species’ responses using a metric that describes the realised velocity of climate change: how closely species’ responses have tracked changing climate through time. In contrast to existing ‘climate velocity’ metrics that have focused on space, we focus on species and index their responses to a null expectation of change in order to examine drivers of inter-specific variation. Here we show that species are tracking climate on average, but not sufficiently to keep up with the pace of climate change. Further, species responses are highly idiosyncratic, and thus highlight that projections assuming uniform responses may be misleading. This is in stark contrast to species’ present-day and historical climate niches, which show strong evidence of the imprint of evolutionary history and functional traits. Our analyses are a first step in exploring the vast wealth of empirical data on species’ historic responses to recent climate change.

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The climate velocity of the contiguous United States during the 20th century

Global Change Biology ◽

10.1111/gcb.12026 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 19 (1) ◽

pp. 241-251 ◽

Cited By ~ 164

Author(s):

Solomon Z. Dobrowski ◽

John Abatzoglou ◽

Alan K. Swanson ◽

Jonathan A. Greenberg ◽

Alison R. Mynsberge ◽

...

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

20Th Century ◽

Climate Velocity

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Incorporating climate velocity into the design of climate-smart networks of protected areas

10.1101/2020.06.08.139519 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Nur Arafeh-Dalmau ◽

Isaac Brito-Morales ◽

David S. Schoeman ◽

Hugh P. Possingham ◽

Carissa J. Klein ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Protected Areas ◽

Economic Cost ◽

Cost Effective ◽

Ecological Resilience ◽

Marine Biodiversity ◽

Generic Level ◽

Climate Velocity ◽

Conservation Plans ◽

Design Cost

Climate change is redistributing terrestrial and marine biodiversity and altering fundamental ecological interactions. To adequately conserve biodiversity and promote its long-term persistence, protected areas should account for the ecological implications of species redistribution. Data paucity across many systems means that achieving this goal requires generic metrics that represent likely responses of multiple taxa to climate change. Climate velocity is one such metric, reflecting potential species range shifts at a generic level. Here, we explore four approaches to incorporating climate velocity metrics into the design of protected areas using the Mediterranean Sea as an illustrative example. Our methods are designed to meet two climate-smart planning objectives: 1) protect climate refugia by selecting slow-moving climate velocity areas, and 2) maintain the capacity of ecological systems to adapt by representing a suite of climate-velocity trajectory classes. We found that incorporating climate velocity as a cost measure in Marxan is the best approach for selecting slower-moving areas, which are good indicators of climate refugia. However, this approach fails to accommodate socio-economic cost data, and is probably impractical. Incorporating climate velocity as a boundary or as a feature provides both selection of slower-moving areas and solutions with lower socio-economic cost. Finally, we were able to design cost-effective networks of protected areas representing a suite of climate-velocity trajectories classes, which have the potential to help species adapt to a changing climate. This work presents simple and practical ways of including climate velocity in conservation plans on land and in the ocean to achieve the key climate-smart objectives of protecting climate refugia and enhancing ecological resilience.

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Trait-mediated shifts and climate velocity decouple an endothermic marine predator and its ectothermic prey

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-021-97318-z ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

L. H. Thorne ◽

J. A. Nye

Keyword(s):

Pilot Whale ◽

Local Climate ◽

Marine Food Web ◽

Marine Predator ◽

Climate Shifts ◽

Fisheries Bycatch ◽

Poleward Shift ◽

Pilot Whales ◽

Climate Velocity ◽

Distributional Shifts

AbstractClimate change is redistributing biodiversity globally and distributional shifts have been found to follow local climate velocities. It is largely assumed that marine endotherms such as cetaceans might shift more slowly than ectotherms in response to warming and would primarily follow changes in prey, but distributional shifts in cetaceans are difficult to quantify. Here we use data from fisheries bycatch and strandings to examine changes in the distribution of long-finned pilot whales (Globicephala melas), and assess shifts in pilot whales and their prey relative to climate velocity in a rapidly warming region of the Northwest Atlantic. We found a poleward shift in pilot whale distribution that exceeded climate velocity and occurred at more than three times the rate of fish and invertebrate prey species. Fish and invertebrates shifted at rates equal to or slower than expected based on climate velocity, with more slowly shifting species moving to deeper waters. We suggest that traits such as mobility, diet specialization, and thermoregulatory strategy are central to understanding and anticipating range shifts. Our findings highlight the potential for trait-mediated climate shifts to decouple relationships between endothermic cetaceans and their ectothermic prey, which has important implications for marine food web dynamics and ecosystem stability.

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