Garden, J. G., O’Donnell, T. and Catterall, C. P. 2015. Changing habitat areas and static reserves: challenges to species protection under climate change. Landscape Ecology, 30, 1959-1973. DOI: 10.1007/s10980-015-0223-3
Changing climates can lead to shifts in the spatial distribution of a species and its suitable habitat, potentially altering the effectiveness of previously fixed protected areas. This paper develops a broad approach to characterizing species’ climate-induced distributional changes due to location displacement or refugial dynamics along with the effectiveness of the protected area network. Distributional data, climate data, and other environmental data were used to produce species distribution models for 13 species. Areas of suitable habitat for each species were predicted according to three climate regimes and overlaid with GIS maps of protected areas. Suitable habitat extent decreased across climate regimes for all 13 species as did the proportion of refugia extent within the original suitable habitat extent. The amount of protected habitat decreased under future climates though this is likely due to overall decreases in the habitat extent as the proportion of habitat protected in the study area did not change over time. This study forecasts a decline in suitable habitat for forest obligate species within the study area as the climate changes. Patterns of species response to the changing climate were better characterized by refugial dynamics rather than location displacement. These findings are consistent with species ranges shrinking in the future around refugia within or near the current distribution as opposed to shifting in location. The purpose of this study was to predict the impact of climate change on the habitat extent of these species and as such other threats to habitat, such as deforestation, were intentionally not considered. In order to better predict suitable habitat extent future research would need to include all threats to habitat in the study area.