Presentation made at the TELDAP International Conference in Taiwan, 2nd march 2010. Addresses issues of climate change on biodiversity distribution, and means of adatpation in the case of agrobiodiversity.
Are Protected Areas Enough To Conserve Terrestrial Biodiversity Teldap Taiwan March 2010
1. Are protected areas enough to conserve terrestrial biodiversity in a 2050 climate? Andy Jarvis, Julian Ramirez, Luigi Guarino, Reymondin, Hector Tobón, Daniel Amariles
2. Contents The boring bit – data quality The fun bit – modelling Our current coverage of protected areas – pretty good! The bad news – the future The case of Taiwan What to do? An example in agrobiodiversity The next steps
3. The Main Messages The availability of biodiversity data is absolutely necessary to be able to PLAN conservation now and into the future Data should be shared nationally for developing national plans, but also internationally for designing international policy Especially in the case of climate change: species move around, and they do NOT respect national borders, nor do they need visas!
4. The Wallace Initiative framework: 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 Map potential corridors for species Potential refugia, carbon dist., and design of REDD mechanisms Driving of protected area design in the 21st century Provide insights to aid the development of adaptation plans
6. The GBIF database: status of the data The database holds 177,887,193 occurrences Plantae occurrences are 44,706,505 (25,13%) 33,340,000 (74.5%) have coordinates How many of them are correct, and reliable? How many new georreferences could we get? CURRENT STATUS OF THE Plantae RECORDS
8. The GBIF database: status of the data How to make the data reliable enough? Verify coordinates at different levels Are the records where they say they are? Are the records inside land areas (for terrestrial plant species only) Are all the records within the environmental niche of the taxon? Sea records: not verifiable Correct wrong references Add references to those that do not have Cross-check with curators and feedback the database
9. The GBIF database: status of the data How to make that possible? Java-based scripts Spatial datasets: environmental descriptors, administrative boundaries, high resolution land area mask Some processing power Enough storage And… most important: Java geeks!
10. Using a random sample of 950.000 occurrences with coordinates
11. Are the records where they say they are?: country-level verification Records with null country: 58.051 6,11% of total Records with incorrect country: 6.918 0,72% of total Total excluded by country 64.969 6,83% of total Records mostly located in country boundaries Inaccuracies in coordinates What on earth is this?
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13. Not so bad at all… stats 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 Summary of errors or misrepresented data
15. Next steps It now takes 27 minutes to verify 950,000 records, 177million would be 83 hours (3 ½ days) Identify terrestrial plant species and separate them from sea species Use a georreferencing algorithm to: Correct wrong references Incorporate new location data to those with NULLlat,lon Interpret 2nd & 3rd-level administrative boundaries and use them too Implement environmental cross-checking (outliers)
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17. So what do we face in terms of biodiversity distribution in 2050?
18. The current situation Covering 13.8% of the total global surface (3.8% international, 10% national)
19. Results: protected areas per region Global biodiversity currently well conserved Current extent of in situ conservation
20. The data: current and future climates Current climates from WorldClim 19 bioclimatic indices at 10 arc-minutes Future climates from downscaled GCM outputs 18 models at 10 arc-minutes spatial resolution For 2050s Under the A2a emission scenario 19 bioclimatic variables as for WorldClim Control run with the average climate of all GCMs
21. The approach Maximum entropy as a very accurate algorithm for niche modeling 10 or more points for each of the 33,004 taxa Current: two extreme migration scenarios Unlimited migration (maximum adaptation) Null migration (no adaptation) Measures of diversity and area loss Per region and globally Within Protected Areas Overall
22. Modeling approach Potential habitat expansion 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 UNLIMITED MIGRATION NULL MIGRATION
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24. CURRENT Results: Current and future predicted species richness Important hotspots in Latin America, Europe, Australasia and Central Africa Displacement and loss of niches UNLIMITED MIGRATION NULL MIGRATION
25. Results: changes in species richness Null migration: losses everywhere Unlimited migration: mostly displacement
26. UNLIMITED MIGRATION Results: changes in species richness Null migration: losses everywhere Unlimited migration: mostly displacement NULL MIGRATION
28. Results: in situ conservation under the context of CC Expected changes within protected areas (PAs) sometimes occur at a greater extent than non-protected areas NULL MIGRATION UNLIMITED MIGRATION Our protected areas not prepared to conserve biodiversity in 2050
29. Nature conservation in the Amazon Climate-stable refugia: Restoration Climate-stable refugia: Protected areas
30. Planeandoestrategias de adaptacion No future for biodiversity: Production Corridors through agriculture to enable movement of biodiversity
31. Plant diversity distribution Most diverse areas concentrated in southeastern and central Taiwan Western coast to be less important in terms of richness per se… but what about uniqueness?
32. Expected richness by 2050s (A2) NO ADAPTATION FULL ADAPTATION Western coast patch with low Diversity… to be expanded Central Taiwan to be affected even considering full adaptation…
33. Expected relative changes by 2050s (A2) NO ADAPTATION FULL ADAPTATION RED areas are critical as will have significant losses even with Full Adaptation Maximum loss of 27%... Not so high though… GREEN areas for conservation
34. 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 of protected areas Redesigned functional landscapes also essential: Eco-efficient agriculture
35. When each of the specimens die? How much does each specimen need to move to survive? Modelling migration
37. The solution and the problem Wild relative species A. batizocoi - 12 germplasm accessions A. cardenasii - 17 germplasm accessions A. diogoi - 5 germplasm accessions Florunner, with no root-knot nematode resistance COAN, with population density of root-knot nematodes >90% less than in Florunner
39. Massiveloss of agrobiodiversity FAO (1998) estimates that since the beginning of this century, about 75% of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops has been lost. In China, for example, nearly 10,000 wheat varieties were cultivated in 1949. By the 1970s, only about 1,000 varieties were still in use (FAO 1996). In Mexico, only 20% of the maize varieties reported in 1930 are now known in the country (FAO 1996). In Germany about half of the plant species in pastures have been lost (Isselstein 2003) In south Italy about 75% of crop varieties have disappeared (Hammer et al. 2003).
48. Wild Vigna collecting priorities Spatial analysis on current conserved materials *Gaps* in current collections Definition and prioritisation of collecting areas 8 100x100km cells to complete collections of 23 wild Vigna priority species
52. What the data says Our protected areas work today, not tomorrow Do we conserve 10 -> 20% of the land mass, or do we need a new conservation paradigm? The solutions for agricultural biodiversity are actually more simple We need to reconstruct our landscapes to function as protected areas -> Eco-efficient agriculture
53. Reminder: The Main Messages The availability of biodiversity data is absolutely necessary to be able to PLAN conservation now and into the future Data should be shared nationally for developing national plans, but also internationally for designing international policy Especially in the case of climate change: species move around, and they do NOT respect national borders, nor do they need visas!