Are protected areas enough to conserve terrestrial biodiversity in a
2050 climate?Andy Jarvis, Julian Ramirez, Luigi
Guarino, Reymondin, Hector Tobón, Daniel Amariles
We’re still not doing enough to convince people
of the seriousness
Contents
• The boring bit – data quality
• The fun bit – modelling
• Our current coverage of protected areas – pretty good!
• The bad news
• What to do? An example in agrobiodiversity
• The next steps
• The Peter Jones Scholarship for Agricultural Informatics
The Wallace Initiative framework:
1. 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
2. Map potential corridors for species3. Potential refugia, carbon, and design of REDD
mechanisms4. Driving of protected area design in the 21st century5. Provide information to aid the development of
adaptation plans
The Boring Bit – Data Quality
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 OFTHE Plantae RECORDS
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
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!
• Using a random sample of 950.000 occurrences with coordinates
• Are the records where they say they are?: country-level verification
Records mostly locatedin country boundaries
Inaccuracies incoordinates
What on earth is this?
Records with null country: 58.051 6,11% of total Records with incorrect country: 6.918 0,72% of totalTotal excluded by country 64.969 6,83% of total
• Are the terrestrial plant species in land?: Coastal verification
Errors, and more errors
Records in the ocean: 9.866 1,03% of total Records near land (range 5km): 34.347 3,61% of totalRecords outside of mask: 369 0,04% of totalTotal excluded by mask 44.582 4.69% of total
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
TOTAL EVALUATED RECORDS: 950.000
Good records: 840.449 88.47% of total
RESULTING DATABASE
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
• Sea species not verifiable
• Use a georreferencing algorithm to:– Correct wrong references
– Incorporate new location data to those with NULL lat,lon
• Interpret 2nd & 3rd-level administrative boundaries and use them too
• Implement environmental cross-checking (outliers)
So what do we face in terms of biodiversity distribution in 2050?
The current situation
• Covering 13.8% of the total global surface (3.8% international, 10% national)
Results: protected areas per region
0
1000
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0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000
Maximum hotspot overall
Ma
xim
um
ho
tsp
ot
wit
hin
PA
s Complete representativeness
Average representativeness
UK
World
Mexico
US
South AfricaNorth Africa
Middle eastSaudi Arabia
West Africa
Brazil
Current extent of in situ conservation
Global biodiversity currently well conserved
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
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– Null migration
• Measures of diversity and area loss– Per region and globally
• Within Protected Areas• Overall
Modeling approach
• 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
NULL MIGRATION
UNLIMITEDMIGRATION
Potential habitatexpansion
NULL MIGRATION UNLIMITED MIGRATION
CURRENT
Results: Current and future predicted species richness
• Important hotspots in Latin America, Europe, Australasia and Central Africa
• Displacement and loss of niches
NULL MIGRATIONUNLIMITED MIGRATION
Results: changes in species richness
• Null migration: losses everywhere
• Unlimited migration: mostly displacement
Results: changes within regions
• Changes in species richness under both migration scenarios
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UK
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Fra
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Null migration
Unlimited migration
Results: in situ conservation under the context of CC
• No matter if the best ‘adaptation’ scenario (unlimited dispersal) is chosen, negatives are expected in most regions
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0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Percent of area with loss within PAs [UM]
Ch
an
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in
sp
ec
ies
ric
hn
es
s w
ith
in
PA
s [
UM
]
Caribbean
Central America
France
Germany
Australia
ItalyMexico
South AmericaEurope West Africa
South KoreaBrazilMiddle EastUS
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
-1000
-800
-600
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0
-1000 -800 -600 -400 -200 0
Change in species richness [NM]
Ch
an
ge in
sp
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s r
ich
ness
wit
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Pas [
NM
]
South America
Central America
France
Australasia
Germany
Caribbean
Brazil
US
Globe
-800
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0
200
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-800 -600 -400 -200 0 200 400
Change in species richness [NM]
Ch
an
ge in
sp
ecie
s r
ich
ness
wit
hin
Pas [
NM
]
France
Central America
GermanyCaribbean
South Korea
NULL MIGRATION
UNLIMITED MIGRATION
Our protected areas not prepared to conserve biodiversity in 2050
CC on top of ongoing processes: habitat degradation
• Land use change monitoring model
• Occurrences from the GBIF database
• Protected areas
MEASUREMENTS BETWEEN 2004-2009…
Caqueta, Jan 2004 – May 2009Date
Threats to biodiversity from habitat degradation
• From 12,853,796 records (60,894 taxa)
– 315,590 records (2.5%) from 13,250 taxa (21.76%) can be found in the Amazon
• At least one population from 1,662 taxa (12.5%) is now extinct due to land use changes
• 3.9% taxa have more than 5% of their populations now extinct
• 1.3% have more than 10% and… 0.4% have more than 20%
ESTIMATIONS FROM 2004 to mid-2009… in only five and a half years, some 2.5% of the global biodiversity is under threat at different levels… only taking into account LUC
79.7%
18.0%
2.3%
Taxa outside the Amazon Taxa in degraded lands
Taxa outside degraded lands
In situ conclusions
• Protected areas function today, at least on paper• Under a changed climate however, they do not
effectively conserve biodiversity, even assuming unlimited migration
• 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 status help
• Redesigned functional landscapes also essential: Eco-efficient agriculture
Next steps… scientific rigor
• A far more detailed approach is required including
– Individual GCM results
– Other emission and policy scenarios
– All GBIF species with more taxonomic and georreferencingcorrections
– Other time slices: 2020s, 2030s, 2040s…
– Validation metrics of Maxent models
– Intermediate migration scenarios
– Measure the number of extinct species for each region
– Dealing with bias in the data. Sorry France.
– When each of the specimens die?
– How much does each specimen need to move to survive?
Modelling migration
Pathways to adaptation in agrobiodiversity
Florunner, with no root-
knot nematode resistance
COAN, with population
density of root-knot
nematodes >90% less
than in Florunner
Wild relative species
A. batizocoi - 12 germplasm accessions
A. cardenasii - 17 germplasm accessions
A. diogoi - 5 germplasm accessions
The solution and the problem
SpeciesChange in area
of distribution (%)
Predicted state
in 2055
batizocoi -100 Extinct
cardenasii -100 Extinct
correntina -100 Extinct
decora -100 Extinct
diogoi -100 Extinct
duranensis -91 Threatened
glandulifera -17 Stable
helodes -100 Extinct
hoehnii -100 Extinct
kempff-mercadoi -69 Near-Threatened
kuhlmannii -100 Extinct
magna -100 Extinct
microsperma -100 Extinct
palustris -100 Extinct
praecox -100 Extinct
stenosperma -86 Threatened
villosa -51 Near-Threatened
Impact of Climate Change – Wild Peanuts
Massive loss 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).
Gap Analysis: Strategiesto fill the holes in our
seed collections
HERBARIUM GERMPLASM
NOGERMPLASM
DEFICIENTGERMPLASM
POTENTIALRICHNESS
RAREENVIRONMENTS
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
Richness in collecting zones at species level
Richness in collecting zones at genepool level
What the data says
• Our protected areas work today, not tomorrow
• Do we conserve 20% of the land mass, or do we need a new conservation paradigm?
• The solutions for agricultural biodiversity are actually more simple. But what about the useless species? ;-)
• We need to reconstruct our landscapes to function as protected areas -> Eco-efficient agriculture
The Final Word
Silvia Elena Castaño Enna Diaz Betancourt
Juan Carlos Andrade
Simone Staiger Ana Milena Guerrero Glenn Graham Hyman
Anton Eitzineger
Lilian Patricia Torres
Carlos Nagles Jorge Cardona
Simon Cook
The Oldies
Andy Jarvis
Natalia Uribe Robert AndradeJulián Ramirez
Daniel Jimenez Vanesa Herrera
Nora Castañeda
Mike Salazar
Jhon Ocampo
Hector Favio Tobón
The Youth
Louis Reymondin
Ovidio RiveraElizabeth Barona
Katherin Tehelen
Victor Augusto Lizcano Angelica Ma. Henao Carolina Argote D.
Daniel Amariles
Oriana Carolina Ovalle
And the positively under-age
Emmanuel Zapata
The Peter Jones Scholarship for Agricultural Informatics