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      Climate change threatens European conservation areas

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          Abstract

          Europe has the world's most extensive network of conservation areas. Conservation areas are selected without taking into account the effects of climate change. How effectively would such areas conserve biodiversity under climate change? We assess the effectiveness of protected areas and the Natura 2000 network in conserving a large proportion of European plant and terrestrial vertebrate species under climate change. We found that by 2080, 58 ± 2.6% of the species would lose suitable climate in protected areas, whereas losses affected 63 ± 2.1% of the species of European concern occurring in Natura 2000 areas. Protected areas are expected to retain climatic suitability for species better than unprotected areas ( P<0.001), but Natura 2000 areas retain climate suitability for species no better and sometimes less effectively than unprotected areas. The risk is high that ongoing efforts to conserve Europe's biodiversity are jeopardized by climate change. New policies are required to avert this risk.

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          Most cited references53

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          A significant upward shift in plant species optimum elevation during the 20th century.

          Spatial fingerprints of climate change on biotic communities are usually associated with changes in the distribution of species at their latitudinal or altitudinal extremes. By comparing the altitudinal distribution of 171 forest plant species between 1905 and 1985 and 1986 and 2005 along the entire elevation range (0 to 2600 meters above sea level) in west Europe, we show that climate warming has resulted in a significant upward shift in species optimum elevation averaging 29 meters per decade. The shift is larger for species restricted to mountain habitats and for grassy species, which are characterized by faster population turnover. Our study shows that climate change affects the spatial core of the distributional range of plant species, in addition to their distributional margins, as previously reported.
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            Ecosystem service supply and vulnerability to global change in Europe.

            Global change will alter the supply of ecosystem services that are vital for human well-being. To investigate ecosystem service supply during the 21st century, we used a range of ecosystem models and scenarios of climate and land-use change to conduct a Europe-wide assessment. Large changes in climate and land use typically resulted in large changes in ecosystem service supply. Some of these trends may be positive (for example, increases in forest area and productivity) or offer opportunities (for example, "surplus land" for agricultural extensification and bioenergy production). However, many changes increase vulnerability as a result of a decreasing supply of ecosystem services (for example, declining soil fertility, declining water availability, increasing risk of forest fires), especially in the Mediterranean and mountain regions.
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              Predicting extinction risks under climate change: coupling stochastic population models with dynamic bioclimatic habitat models.

              Species responses to climate change may be influenced by changes in available habitat, as well as population processes, species interactions and interactions between demographic and landscape dynamics. Current methods for assessing these responses fail to provide an integrated view of these influences because they deal with habitat change or population dynamics, but rarely both. In this study, we linked a time series of habitat suitability models with spatially explicit stochastic population models to explore factors that influence the viability of plant species populations under stable and changing climate scenarios in South African fynbos, a global biodiversity hot spot. Results indicate that complex interactions between life history, disturbance regime and distribution pattern mediate species extinction risks under climate change. Our novel mechanistic approach allows more complete and direct appraisal of future biotic responses than do static bioclimatic habitat modelling approaches, and will ultimately support development of more effective conservation strategies to mitigate biodiversity losses due to climate change.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Ecol Lett
                ele
                Ecology Letters
                Blackwell Publishing Ltd
                1461-023X
                1461-0248
                May 2011
                : 14
                : 5
                : 484-492
                Affiliations
                [1 ]simpleDepartment of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, National Museum of Natural Sciences CSIC, 28006, Madrid, Spain
                [2 ]simpleRui Nabeiro Biodiversity Chair, CIBIO, University of Évora, Largo dos Colegiais 7000 Évora, Portugal
                [3 ]simpleForest Research Centre, Instituto Superior de Agronomia, Technical University of Lisbon Tapada da Ajuda, 1349-017 Lisbon, Portugal
                [4 ]simpleDepartment of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki Viikinkaari 1, 00014, Finland
                [5 ]simpleCentre for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, University of Copenhagen Universitetsparken 15, 2100, Denmark
                [6 ]simpleLaboratoire d'Ecologie Alpine, UMR-CNRS 5553, Université J. Fourier BP 53, 38041 Grenoble Cedex 9, France
                Author notes
                * Correspondene: E-mail: maraujo@ 123456mncn.csic.es
                [†]

                These authors contributed equally to this work.

                Re-use of this article is permitted in accordance with the Terms and Conditions set out at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com/onlineopen#OnlineOpen_Terms

                Article
                10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01610.x
                3116148
                21447141
                46b8430b-0fb6-4884-a6f7-919db02ec486
                Copyright © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/CNRS

                Re-use of this article is permitted in accordance with the Creative Commons Deed, Attribution 2.5, which does not permit commercial exploitation.

                History
                : 02 November 2010
                : 10 December 2010
                : 09 February 2011
                : 18 February 2011
                Categories
                Letters

                Ecology
                bioclimatic envelope models,climate change,conservation planning,gap analysis,natura 2000 networks,protected areas

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