Conservation in the context of climate change: practical guidelines for land protection at local scales.

ABSTRACT: Climate change will affect the composition of plant and animal communities in many habitats and geographic settings. This presents a dilemma for conservation programs--will the portfolio of protected lands we now have achieve a goal of conserving biodiversity in the future when the ecological communities occurring within them change? Climate change will significantly alter many plant communities, but the geophysical underpinnings of these landscapes, such as landform, elevation, soil, and geological properties, will largely remain the same. Studies show that extant landscapes with a diversity of geophysical characteristics support diverse plant and animal communities. Therefore, geophysically diverse landscapes will likely support diverse species assemblages in the future, although which s

SUBMITTER: Ruddock K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3835331 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature