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Identifying refugia from climate change
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This article highlights how the loose definition of the term ‘refugia’ has led to discrepancies in methods used to assess the vulnerability of species to the current trend of rising global temperatures. The term ‘refugia’ is commonly used without distinguishing between macrorefugia and microrefugia, ex situ refugia and in situ refugia, glacial and interglacial refugia or refugia based on habitat stability and refugia based on climatic stability. It is not always clear which definition is being used, and this makes it difficult to assess the appropriateness of the methods employed. For example, it is crucial to develop accurate fine-scale climate grids when identifying microrefugia, but coarse-scale macroclimate might be adequate for determining macrorefugia. Similarly, identifying in situ refugia might be more appropriate for species with poor dispersal ability but this may overestimate the extinction risk for good dispersers. More care needs to be taken to properly define the context when referring to refugia from climate change so that the validity of methods and the conservation significance of refugia can be assessed.
Keywords
Bioclimatic envelope models, climatic stability, conservation biogeography, cryptic refugia, ecological niche models, extinction risk, interglacial refugia, macrorefugia, microclimate, microrefugia.
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Identifying the World’s Most Climate Change Vulnerable Species: A Systematic Trait-Based Assessment of all Birds, Amphibians and Corals
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Climate change will have far-reaching impacts on biodiversity, including increasing extinction rates. Current approaches to quantifying such impacts focus on measuring exposure to climatic change and largely ignore the biological differences between species that may significantly increase or reduce their vulnerability. To address this, we present a framework for assessing three dimensions of climate change vulnerability, namely sensitivity, exposure and adaptive capacity; this draws on species’ biological traits and their modeled exposure to projected climatic changes. In the largest such assessment to date, we applied this approach to each of the world’s birds, amphibians and corals (16,857 species). The resulting assessments identify the species with greatest relative vulnerability to climate change and the geographic areas in which they are concentrated, including the Amazon basin for amphibians and birds, and the central Indo-west Pacific (Coral Triangle) for corals. We found that high concentration areas for species with traits conferring highest sensitivity and lowest adaptive capacity differ from those of highly exposed species, and we identify areas where exposure-based assessments alone may over or under-estimate climate change impacts. We found that 608–851 bird (6–9%), 670–933 amphibian (11– 15%), and 47–73 coral species (6–9%) are both highly climate change vulnerable and already threatened with extinction on the IUCN Red List. The remaining highly climate change vulnerable species represent new priorities for conservation. Fewer species are highly climate change vulnerable under lower IPCC SRES emissions scenarios, indicating that reducing greenhouse emissions will reduce climate change driven extinctions. Our study answers the growing call for a more biologically and ecologically inclusive approach to assessing climate change vulnerability. By facilitating independent assessment of the three dimensions of climate change vulnerability, our approach can be used to devise species and area- specific conservation interventions and indices. The priorities we identify will strengthen global strategies to mitigate climate change impacts.
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Igniting Inspiration for Women in Fire
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If our use of fire for managing lands is to improve and expand in the United States, it will need to involve more women and diverse perspectives. Thanks to programs like Women-in-Fire Prescribed Fire Training Exchanges (WTREX), more women are participating in and leading controlled burns.
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Ikenoue Kafuku.pdf
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HUE-JOH
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Illinois Division of Forestry Resources
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It is the mission of the Illinois Division of Forestry Resources to protect, perpetuate, restore, conserve, and manage the forest and related resources of Illinois, both public and private, rural and urban; and to ensure for future generations the greatest economic, scientific, and social benefits that can only be provided through a forest ecological system.
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Illuminating the Modern Dance of Climate and CO2
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Records of Earth’s past climate imply higher atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations in the future
19 SEPTEMBER 2008 VOL 321 SCIENCE
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Image Gallery
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Images
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Photo gallery highlighting the landscapes, habitats, species, and conservation work taking place within the Landscape Partnership.
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Imitator salamander, melanistic phase_squamatologist
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Imitator salamander
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