Protected area characteristics that help waterbirds respond to climate warming

In: Gaget , E , Johnston , A , Pavón-Jordán , D , Lehikoinen , A , Sandercock , B K , Soultan , A , Božič , L , Clausen , P , Devos , K , Domsa , C , Encarnação , V , Faragó , S , Fitzgerald , N , Frost , T , Gaudard , C , Gosztonyi , L , Haas , F , Hornman , M , Langendoen , T , Ieronymidou , C , Luigujõe , L , Meissner , W , Mikuska , T , Molina , B , Musilová , Z , Paquet , J Y , Petkov , N , Portolou , D , Ridzoň , J , Sniauksta , L , Stīpniece , A , Teufelbauer , N , Wahl , J , Zenatello , M & Brommer , J E 2021 , ' Protected area characteristics that help waterbirds respond to climate warming ' , Conservation Biology . https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13877

Abstract

Protected area networks facilitate community changes in responses to climate warming. However, the contribution of the site environmental and conservation-oriented characteristics to these responses to climate warming are not well understood. Here, we investigate how composition of non-breeding waterbird communities within the European Union Natura 2000 (N2K) network changes in response to increases in temperature. We measured the community reshuffling of 97 waterbird species in 3,018 N2K sites over 25 years in 26 European countries. We find that N2K sites explicitly designated for protection of waterbirds and with a management plan had faster climate-driven community changes. In contrast, the designation period of the N2K sites was not associated with community adjustment, and sites funded under EU-LIFE had lower climate-driven community changes. Our findings imply that efficient conservation policy that may help waterbird community responses to climate warming is to manage sites that are specifically designated for waterbirds. ; Climate warming is driving changes in species distributions and community composition. Many species have a so-called climatic debt, that is, shifts in range lag behind shifts in temperature isoclines. Inside protected areas (PAs), community changes in response to climate warming can be facilitated by greater colonization rates by warm-dwelling species, but also mitigated by lowering extirpation rates of cold-dwelling species. An evaluation of the relative importance of colonization-extirpation processes is important to inform conservation strategies that aim for both climate debt reduction and species conservation. We assessed the colonization-extirpation dynamics involved in community changes in response to climate inside and outside PAs. To do so, we used 25 years of occurrence data of nonbreeding waterbirds in the western Palearctic (97 species, 7071 sites, 39 countries, 1993–2017). We used a community temperature index (CTI) framework based on species thermal affinities to ...