Document Actions
Identifying areas of climate stability for conservation focus
Anthropogenic climate change is expected to shift native species ranges, cause habitat degradation, and allow invasive species to infiltrate into natural areas. During past periods of climate change, colonization by native species often occurred much more quickly than scientists would have expected based on known populations of potential colonizers. These extremely fast colonization events indicate that small pockets of relict populations, present in microrefugia, persisted on the landscape.
We propose to identify potential areas of climate stability that would act as reservoirs for biodiversity, provide dispersers for colonization, maintain genetic diversity, and increase overall species persistence during the next century of ecological turnover. Such microrefugia will be identified by modeling changes in vegetation and climate stress at a very fine scale. Areas that experience the least change and the lowest modeling uncertainty, in addition to harboring the highest biodiversity, would be recognized as part of a nationwide system of microrefugia.
Because Oregon is characterized by high topographic complexity, has known areas of past refugia, and is expected to experience potentially large turnover in habitats, it is suitable as a model state in order to fine tune the approach prior to a national effort. Once we identify microrefugia in Oregon, we will assess potential land use conflicts and conservation needs, in addition to partnering with state lawmakers and conservation practitioners in order to gain support for our effort to protect and manage such areas for resiliency. We hope the Oregon pilot will set the stage for a national effort to identify and protect a system of microrefugia.
Current American Goldfinch range in the southern Rockies is shown in green. Future projected range is in pink. Areas of habitat stability are where the two overlap, in brown. These would be target areas for conservation efforts for this species. The microrefugia concept would concurrently address areas of stability for multiple species and habitat types. Adapted from Price and Glick 2002.
