The Wallace Initiative:

Biodiversity conservation in an era of change

Julián Ramírez and Andy JarvisInternational Centre for Tropical Agriculture, CIAT

Challenge Program on Climate Change and Food Security

The Wallace Initiative framework:

1. Assessment of impacts of climate change on species distributions to:

– Determine refugia– Improve knowledge of risks of exceeding certain

levels of change by means of determining extinction rates

2. Map potential corridors for species3. Potential refugia, carbon dist., and design of

REDD mechanisms4. Driving of protected area design in the 21st

century5. Provide critical conclusions to aid the

development of adaptation plans

1. Impact of climate change on species distributions

Data: GBIF inputs• Using 62,000 terrestrial plant taxa

– Local version of the GBIF database– Selecting species with at least 10 unique data

points– 67,039 species (15,215,524 occurrences)– Correcting georreferences

• Is the record in land or sea?• Is in the country/department/locality it says it is?• Is within the environmental niche of the species?

– 62,000 selected species (12 million occurrences)– Run for all these species

Assessing the GBIF database

• 44’706.505 plant records

• 33’340.008 (74,57%) with coordinates

• From those– 88.5% are geographically correct at two levels– 6.8% have null or incorrect country (incl. sea

plant species)– 4.7% are near the coasts but not in-land

Good records: 88.47% of total

Resulting Database

An example from GPG2

IRRI COLLECTION

BEFOREAFTER

ADDING VALUE TO THE DATASET

Courtesy R. Hijmans & Jacob van Etten

Plus… automated georreferencing

Real locationAt <12km uncertainty

The data: current and future climates

• Current climates from WorldClim– 19 bioclimatic indices

• Future climates from downscaled GCM outputs (via ClimGen)– 7 GCMs at 0.5 degree resolution– 2020s, 2050s, 2080s– SRES-A1B emission scenario– Same 19 bioclimatic indices– Now running, and awaiting results…

The modeling approach• Maximum entropy as a very accurate niche modeling

technique• 10 or more points for each of the 62,000 taxa• 21 future projections (7 GCMs x 3 timeslices… but will project

over other SRES, RCP and AVOID scenarios)• Current: two extreme ‘adaptation’ scenarios

– Full adaptation– Null adaptation

• Measures of diversity (sp. richness) and area loss– Per country, region and globally

• Within Protected Areas• Overall

• Current extent of conserved biodiversity within protected areas (in situ gap analysis)

• How to make climate-smart conservation plans?

Modeling approach

• Aplying the maximum entropy algorithm– Macoubea guianensis Aubl.: food for rural indigenous

communities in the Amazon

Data harvesting from GBIF Building the presence model Projecting on future climates

NULL MIGRATION

UNLIMITEDMIGRATION

Potential habitatexpansion

NO ADAPTATION FULL ADAPTATION

MaxEnt models performance

• Logistic deviation measures the difference between a perfect logistic fit (Ln 1 = 0) y the model’s fit (Ln p)

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Logistic deviation of test data

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)

P LogDev Performance0.1 4.61 Very poor model performance0.2 3.22 Poor model performance0.3 2.41 Poor model performance0.4 1.83 Marginal model performance0.5 1.39 Marginal model performance0.6 1.02 Good model performance0.7 0.71 Good model performance0.8 0.45 Very good model performance0.9 0.21 Very good model performance1.0 0.00 Perfect model performance

Comparing with other studies on plant diversity

Results: in situ gap analysis

• Covering 13.8% of the total global surface (3.8% international, 10% national)

• Holding a great amount of biodiversity

Results: protected areas per region

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Maximum hotspot overall

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s Complete representativeness

Average representativeness

UK

World

Mexico

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South AfricaNorth Africa

Middle eastSaudi Arabia

West Africa

BrazilCurrent extent of in situ conservation

Some issues in highly diverse areas… Global biodiversity currently well conserved

Results: Current species richness

• Important hotspots in Latin America, Australasia and Central Africa well represented… but still missing something

CURRENT

PERCENT CHANGE [null adaptation]

SD among GCMs

PERCENT CHANGE [null adaptation]

SD among GCMs

BETTER CHANCES BUTGREATER UNCERTAINTIES

Results: changes within AVOID regions

• Changes in species richness under both migration scenarios

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Null migration

Unlimited migration

Results: in situ conservation under the context of CC

• No matter if the best ‘adaptation’ scenario (unlimited dispersal) is chosen, negatives are expected in most regions

• There are regions with gains in species richness, but fairly due to displacement of niches

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Percent of area with loss within PAs [UM]

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Caribbean

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ItalyMexico

South AmericaEurope West Africa

South KoreaBrazilMiddle EastUS

Results: in situ conservation under the context of CC

• Expected changes within protected areas (PAs) sometimes occur at a greater extent

• Current gaps in in situ conservation to be larger in changing climates

• Current protected areas to be strengthened, expanded, or re-located if necessary

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Change in species richness [NM]

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Globe

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Change in species richness [NM]

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South Korea

NULL MIGRATION

UNLIMITED MIGRATION

How to make climate-smart conservation plans?

• Climate vulnerability

CURRENT 2050s %Change

Assessing threat level

• Anthropogenic activities threat ecosystems… and therefore, species

Recent Land Use Change

Oil/Gas extraction

Infrastructure development

Grazing pressure

Conversion to Agriculture

Accessibility

Landscape fragmentation and deforestation effect on biodiversity

• De 12,853,796 poblaciones (60,894 spp)– 315,590 pob. (2.5%) de 13,250 especies

(21.76%) estan en el Amazonas• Al menos una pob. de 1,662 especies (12.5%)

esta extinta debido a cambios en UT• 3.9% especies tienen mas de 5% de sus

poblaciones ahora extintas• 1.3% tienen mas de 10% y… 0.4% tinen mas que

20%

79.7%

18.0%

2.3%

Taxa outside the Amazon Taxa in degraded lands

Taxa outside degraded lands

From 2004 to mid-2009 [5.5 yrs]… Almost 2.5% of the Amazon’s biodiversity (the part we know) is under severe threat from LUC

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Current threat to ecosystems

A half-day discussion after

Climate-stable refugia: Protected areas

Climate-stable refugia:

Restoration

A half-day discussion after

Corridors through agriculture to enable movement of biodiversity

No future for biodiversity: Production

A half-day discussion after

• Conservation is a matter of the the number of species and uniqueness

• Indigenous areas act as strong barriers to threats• Anthropogenic activities difficult conservation• Despite the strong threat from CC, there are areas

likely to remain stable• Conservation should be the focus in “climatically

stable” areas and under mid to low threat level• Restoration should focus in highly fragmented

landscapes with mid to high climate vulnerability• Adapting biodiversity needs to consider crop

suitability shifts as well

In situ conclusions

• Protected areas function today, at least on paper• Under a changed climate however, they do not

effectively conserve biodiversity, even assuming maximum adaptation

• In situ conservation needs to be oriented under the context of climate change– Areas to be strengthened (more control)– Areas to be expanded– Areas to be re-located (if migration does occur)

• Enabling migration is critical: corridors between protected areas

• Redesigned functional landscapes also essential: Eco-efficient agriculture

Next steps on methods

• Some thoughts– Assessing uncertainties– Other SRES, AVOID and finally RCP

scenarios– Mammals, Reptiles, Aves (?), Amphibians– Intermediate migration scenarios… how to

assess species natural migrations?– “Acceptable” and expected extinction risks?

Next steps… analysis of policy implications

• Similarities/dissimilarities between regions– Do current criteria for PA selection stand up to climate

change?– What makes one protected area system more

effective than another in combating climate change? – What needs to be changed?

• Do we need a new conservation paradigm? More efficient systems? Or more coverage?

• Agricultural biodiversity needs to be assessed as well

• Timber species, forests… ecosystem-level analyses required