This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: As the climate changes, protecting wildlife increasingly depends on both the conditions within protected areas and the connections between them. A new study published in Conservation Letters identifies where climatic stability and opportunities for movement coincide in Europe, and where gaps could undermine conservation.
The study examines climate stability across 78,793 protected areas in Europe and assesses connectivity between 10,908 of these sites using 10 large mammal species. The findings reveal geographical patterns across Europe, with mountain regions combining relatively stable climates with strong potential connectivity between protected areas. Many western and central European lowlands, on the other hand, face both rapid climate change and limited opportunities for wildlife to move.
The study also incorporated the energy animals need to cross terrain, alongside habitat suitability and movement barriers. This allowed the researchers from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena to assess climatic stability alongside the potential for large mammals to move through surrounding landscapes. "Today's protected areas cannot be treated as fit for the future, especially when we look at the cost of movement across different terrains," explains first author Dr.
Gavin Stark of iDiv and MLU. To assess how long protected areas may retain their baseline temperature conditions, the researchers calculated a so-called climatic residence time. This estimates how quickly the temperatures currently found within a protected area are expected to shift, taking into account the area's size and the rate at which temperature conditions move across the landscape.
This analysis compared a historical baseline (1981–2010) with high-emissions climate projections through 2070, noting substantial regional differences. The median estimated climatic residence time across all protected areas in Germany was 0.9 years and 0.55 years in Poland, compared with 11.8 years in Portugal and 16.2 years in Greece, for example. The incorporation of terrain-related energetic costs into the connectivity analysis allowed for a more comprehensive assessment of the potential of large mammals to move between protected areas in Europe.
Steep slopes increase movement costs, while roads and other barriers can restrict passage. Small protected areas with short climatic residence times warrant particular attention, especially where surrounding landscapes also restrict movement, according to the authors. Montenegro, Albania, and Bosnia and Herzegovina generally combined longer climatic residence times with higher modeled connectivity.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
