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.
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.
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
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 ...
Funding: We also acknowledge the Scientific Project of the State Order of the Government of Russian Federation to Lomonosov Moscow State University No. 121032300105-0 for participating in EBBA2 data. Our research was funded through the 2017–2018 Belmont Forum and BiodivERsA joint call for research proposals, under the BiodivScen ERA—Net COFUND program, with the following funding organizations: the Academy of Finland (Univ. Turku: 326327, Univ. Helsinki: 326338), the Swedish Research Council (Swedish Univ. Agric. Sci: 2018–02440, Lund Univ.: 2018–02441), the Research Council of Norway (Norwegian Instit. for Nature Res., 295767), and the National Science Foundation (Cornell Univ., ICER-1927646), and we also acknowledge the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. ; Wetland bird species have been declining in population size worldwide as climate warming and land-use change affect their suitable habitats. We used species distribution models (SDMs) to predict changes in range dynamics for 64 non-passerine wetland birds breeding in Europe, including range size, position of centroid, and margins. We fitted the SDMs with data collected for the first European Breeding Bird Atlas and climate and land-use data to predict distributional changes over a century (the 1970s–2070s). The predicted annual changes were then compared to observed annual changes in range size and range centroid over a time period of 30 years using data from the second European Breeding Bird Atlas. Our models successfully predicted ca. 75% of the 64 bird species to contract their breeding range in the future, while the remaining species (mostly southerly breeding species) were predicted to expand their breeding ranges northward. The northern margins of southerly species and southern margins of northerly species, both, predicted to shift northward. Predicted changes in range size and shifts in range centroids were broadly positively associated with the observed changes, although some species deviated markedly from the predictions. The predicted average shift in core distributions was ca. 5 km yr−1 towards the north (5% northeast, 45% north, and 40% northwest), compared to a slower observed average shift of ca. 3.9 km yr−1. Predicted changes in range centroids were generally larger than observed changes, which suggests that bird distribution changes may lag behind environmental changes leading to 'climate debt'. We suggest that predictions of SDMs should be viewed as qualitative rather than quantitative outcomes, indicating that care should be taken concerning single species. Still, our results highlight the urgent need for management actions such as wetland creation and restoration to improve wetland birds' resilience to the expected environmental changes in the future. ; Publisher PDF ; Peer reviewed