Human land use and biodiversity under a changing climate.
Pablo A Marquet1,2,3,4, Sebastian Abades1,2, Fabio Labra1,2, David Panitz5,
Juan Armesto1,2
1
Center for Advanced studies in Ecology and Biodiversity (CASEB) and
Departamento de Ecología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Casilla 114D, Santiago, Chile.
2
Instituto de Ecología y Biodiversidad (IEB), Casilla 653, Santiago, Chile.
3
Centro de Cambio Global UC (CCG-UC).
4
The Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, USA
5
Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management University of
California, Santa Barbara, USA
One of the key issues in the discussion of adaptation and mitigation to the
anticipated changes in climate in the coming decades, is the interaction between
human land use and biodiversity responses. Interestingly, while models for how
climate and biodiversity will change abound, model for urban and land use
evolution do not. In this contribution we present a simple approach to assess the
degree to which human land use pattern will affect biodiversity adaptation to
climate changes. We start by generating a simple model characterizing the
present distribution of 104 plant and animal species in southern Chile, based on
temperature and precipitation patterns. Starting from this static distribution,
species are then put in a dynamic landscape where precipitation and
temperature changes according to the Hadley Center Model 3 predictions for
Chile (PRECIS HadCM3). Species track their preferred combination of
temperature and precipitation through the landscape, which is modeled using a
Cellular Automata. We carry out simulations assuming that all sites in the region
are accessible and under the current scenario of human land use patterns, which
renders many sites as inaccessible. When comparing the result of both models it
becomes apparent that human land use patterns can potentially affect negatively
a large proportion of species, several of which decrease their distribution in more
than 80%. To decrease the impact of human land use pattern implies to create a
network of protected areas that will be robust to climate change. The value of
such investment will likely dwarf the current spending in conservation and
protected areas in Chile.
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