Climate Change
Digests about corridors and climate change
Some species will successfully shift ranges under climate change. Many will not.
Climate change. Forest loss. Agricultural intensification. Urbanization and policy change and international markets. The list of factors that influence ecological networks (i.e. connectivity) over the long-term seems to be growing daily, and parsing out their [...]
Protected areas lack connectivity along elevational gradients
A key question of protected areas around the globe is how well they will continue to preserve biodiversity in the face of climate change. As temperatures push species' ranges poleward and upward, there is a [...]
Corridors can help mitigate range shifts in Malagasy lemurs
The combination of geographical isolation, widespread deforestation, political uncertainty and incredible endemic biodiversity has always made Madagascar a conservation hotspot. It will continue to be so in the future, where climate change and human population [...]
Will climate change impact connectivity of marine protected areas?
Marine protected areas act as valuable management tools, often maintaining source populations of fish that support surrounding fished areas through larval dispersal. But will they continue to ensure population persistence given predicted climate change? Shifting [...]
The price of connectivity in stable vs. disturbed conditions
High connectivity is usually linked with high dispersal, generally a positive characteristic in a stable metapopulation. However, high dispersal might not always be a good thing, especially when ecosystems switch between stable and disturbed states, [...]
The future of ocean connectivity
Most studies on connectivity and climate change tend to focus on terrestrial organisms, and those that do focus on marine organisms tend to look at physiological effects at the individual level, or at single-level stressors [...]
Allowing protected areas to come and go
Once a protected area is added into a conservation network, it is usually assumed that it will stay as a protected area in perpetuity. However, Alagador et al. make a strong argument that protected areas [...]
The fate of of hydrologic connectivity in the American Southwest
The American Southwest, already known for its arid environment and scarcity of water sources, may be headed for even drier conditions. In new research coming out in PNAS, Jaeger et al. examine hydrological connectivity and [...]
Developing quantitative management plans for marine protected areas
Connectivity and climate change have increasingly been explored with respect to terrestrial ecosystems, but what about marine ecosystems? In their recent review in Biological Conservation, Magris et al. take a comprehensive look at the literature [...]
Proactive versus reactive approaches to freshwater conservation
Under climate change, reserves are likely to become increasingly unsuitable for the species they were designed to protect. For freshwater ecosystems, which are often overlooked when planning for connectivity in favor of terrestrial or marine [...]
Creating corridors in the tropics based on carbon stock
In the tropics, where aboveground biomass is high and represents a large amount of stored carbon, using carbon stock to delineate corridors represents one potential method for maintaining connectivity in the face of deforestation and [...]
What happens when connectivity can vary over time?
In some ecological systems, individuals are only able to move between populations given a specific event, such as butterflies that require fires to clear old-growth forest and connect populations in open meadows. Such disturbances and [...]