Vulnerability of terrestrial protected areas to climate change [Thesis (M.Sc.)]

Climate change presents one of the most important threats to biodiversity. Protected areas represent a primary tool of modern societies for biodiversity conservation. Today more than 200,000 protected areas have been established worldwide covering 14% of the world’s land surface, aiming to conserve species and habitats of conservation interest. Over the last few years, an increasing number of studies have raised serious concerns on the ability of existing networks to protect biodiversity under global change scenarios. Still, assessments of network efficiency are usually drawn by considering changes in site conditions to conserve species under future scenarios, eliminating our ability to provide a global assessment. In this thesis the vulnerability of protected areas to climate change will be studied at a global scale. Towards this direction, various databases on the spatial distribution of the current network of protected areas and on the climate of the future as derived by model projections will be used. The results showed that there is a difference in the temperature increase between the strict and non-strict protected areas. The strict protected areas will face more temperature increase by about 1C more than the non-strict ones, while arctic and temperate biomes will suffer from more temperature increase than tropic and subtropics biomes till 2070. Climate science and climate data should be more involved in the planning of protected areas and the conservation for biodiversity. A greater understanding of the climate of the future will help people to take better decisions for protecting biodiversity and the ecosystem.