New analysis of climate threats to biodiversity will help conservationists plan for future
By: Communications
Scientists have published the most comprehensive assessment to date of how climate change threatens biodiversity in more than 98,000 protected areas worldwide, aiming to help conservationists build resilience in the face of accelerating climate impacts.
The open-access tool - Wallace’s pARCs (protected Area Resilience to Climate change) - is designed to equip protected area managers and conservation planners with accessible, actionable information, including detailed climate, landcover change, population, and biodiversity projections for most land-based protected areas larger than 1 km².
It is the result of a longterm collaboration between the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the UEA and the eResearch Centre at James Cook University, drawing on the work of the Wallace Initiative - named after ecologist Alfred Russell Wallace - which is investigating the areas and species that are likely to be the most and least affected by climate change in the future.
Published in the journal Climate Resilience and Sustainability, this new paper documents its development and potential uses and showcases the tool’s application using the example of Biebrza National Park in Poland, one of Europe’s largest peat bog landscapes and an internationally important refuge for wetland birds.
The analysis reveals that Biebrza ranks in the bottom 11 per cent globally in projected biodiversity resilience under 4°C global warming, indicating the potential for profound climatedriven ecological disruption and species loss without major adaptation and mitigation action.
Lead author Dr Jeff Price, Associate Professor of Biodiversity and Climate Change at UEA and co-ordinator of the Wallace Initiative, said: “Protected areas are at the heart of global biodiversity conservation, yet were not designed with climate change in mind. Wallace’s pARCs provides the information managers need to understand future risks and make informed decisions about building resilience.
“The example from Biebrza National Park shows just how urgent the challenge is. Without strong adaptation and global mitigation, many protected ecosystems may face potentially irreversible change.”
Commenting on the dataset Shaun Martin, Vice President, Climate Change Adaptation, at the World Wildlife Fund US, said for conservationists it was nothing short of “transformative”.
“Decision-makers and protected area managers often lack the tools and capacity needed to meaningfully incorporate climate risk into management plans. This is precisely where such innovative work has proven invaluable,” he added.
Key Findings
The findings for Biebrza National Park also include:
- More than 70 per cent of species could face climate unsuitability at 4°C of warming, with large impacts projected for insects and plants.
- Severe drought events have already increased, with future projections suggesting multiyear droughts under higher warming levels.
- Climate refugia - areas that remain suitable for most species - shrink sharply beyond 2°C of warming, leaving limited places for species to continue living. While some protected areas will retain refugia at higher warming levels, others will lose most of their potential refugia even if warming were held to 1.5°C.
- Innovative adaptation effort maps illustrate that even at 1.5°C, Biebrza will require substantial, targeted adaptation measures, shifting from ‘businessasusual’ conservation toward facilitating ecological change under higher warming.
Implications for conservation
The findings reinforce that limiting global warming to 1.5 - 2°C remains crucial to avoid potential irreversible biodiversity losses. Beyond these thresholds, adaptation in many protected areas becomes increasingly difficult as some ecosystems cross climatic limits they have not experienced in recent times.
The findings underline the urgent need for both mitigation and adaptation. For example, maintaining Biebrza’s peatlands and marshes will require strengthening water retention to counter rising drought risks and restoring traditional, lowimpact habitat management practices, such as hand mowing to maintain habitat heterogeneity.
In addition, investment will be needed in sponge landscape interventions, such as natural dikes and wetland restoration, to slow runoff and store water.
A tool for planners worldwide
The authors say the Wallace’s pARCs reports offer a powerful resource for protected area authorities, NGOs, and policymakers.
Each report provides standardised climate and biodiversity projections, landcover trends and species population data, as well as maps showing species richness, refugia, and adaptation effort to support evidencebased resilience planning at local and national scales, under a range of global warming levels.
All Wallace’s pARCs reports are freely available at: https://wallaceparcs.uea.ac.uk
‘Wallace’s pARCs - Making climate, climate change and biodiversity data available to protected area managers and conservation planners with an example from Biebrza National Park, Poland’, by Jeff Price, Nicole Forstenhäusler, Erin M Graham, Timothy J Osborn and Rachel Warren, is published in Climate Resilience and Sustainability.
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