Making protected areas effective for biodiversity, climate and food.

The spatial extent of marine and terrestrial protected areas (PAs) was among the most intensely debated issues prior to the decision about the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Positive impacts of PAs on habitats, species diversity and abundance are well documented. Yet, biodiversity loss continues unabated despite efforts to protect 17% of land and 10% of the oceans by 2020. This casts doubt on whether extending PAs to 30%, the agreed target in the Kunming-Montreal GBF, will indeed achieve meaningful biodiversity benefits. Critically, the focus on area coverage obscures the importance of PA effectiveness and overlooks concerns about the impact of PAs on other sustainability objectives. We propose a simple means of assessing and visualising the complex relationships between PA area coverage and effectiveness and their effects on biodiversity conservation, nature-based climate mitigation and food production. Our analysis illustrates how achieving a 30% PA global target could be beneficial for biodiversity and climate. It also highlights important caveats: (i) achieving lofty area coverage objectives alone will be of little benefit without concomitant improvements in effectiveness, (ii) trade-offs with food production particularly for high levels of coverage and effectiveness are likely and (iii) important differences in terrestrial and marine systems need to be recognized when setting and implementing PA targets. The CBD's call for a significant increase in PA will need to be accompanied by clear PA effectiveness goals to reduce and revert dangerous anthropogenic impacts on socio-ecological systems and biodiversity.

Post-2020 biodiversity targets need to embrace climate change.

Recent assessment reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) have highlighted the risks to humanity arising from the unsustainable use of natural resources. Thus far, land, freshwater, and ocean exploitation have been the chief causes of biodiversity loss. Climate change is projected to be a rapidly increasing additional driver for biodiversity loss. Since climate change and biodiversity loss impact human societies everywhere, bold solutions are required that integrate environmental and societal objectives. As yet, most existing international biodiversity targets have overlooked climate change impacts. At the same time, climate change mitigation measures themselves may harm biodiversity directly. The Convention on Biological Diversity's post-2020 framework offers the important opportunity to address the interactions between climate change and biodiversity and revise biodiversity targets accordingly by better aligning these with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. We identify the considerable number of existing and proposed post-2020 biodiversity targets that risk being severely compromised due to climate change, even if other barriers to their achievement were removed. Our analysis suggests that the next set of biodiversity targets explicitly addresses climate change-related risks since many aspirational goals will not be feasible under even lower-end projections of future warming. Adopting more flexible and dynamic approaches to conservation, rather than static goals, would allow us to respond flexibly to changes in habitats, genetic resources, species composition, and ecosystem functioning and leverage biodiversity's capacity to contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Actions to halt biodiversity loss generally benefit the climate.

The two most urgent and interlinked environmental challenges humanity faces are climate change and biodiversity loss. We are entering a pivotal decade for both the international biodiversity and climate change agendas with the sharpening of ambitious strategies and targets by the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Within their respective Conventions, the biodiversity and climate interlinked challenges have largely been addressed separately. There is evidence that conservation actions that halt, slow or reverse biodiversity loss can simultaneously slow anthropogenic mediated climate change significantly. This review highlights conservation actions which have the largest potential for mitigation of climate change. We note that conservation actions have mainly synergistic benefits and few antagonistic trade-offs with climate change mitigation. Specifically, we identify direct co-benefits in 14 out of the 21 action targets of the draft post-2020 global biodiversity framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity, notwithstanding the many indirect links that can also support both biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. These relationships are context and scale-dependent; therefore, we showcase examples of local biodiversity conservation actions that can be incentivized, guided and prioritized by global objectives and targets. The close interlinkages between biodiversity, climate change mitigation, other nature's contributions to people and good quality of life are seldom as integrated as they should be in management and policy. This review aims to re-emphasize the vital relationships between biodiversity conservation actions and climate change mitigation in a timely manner, in support to major Conferences of Parties that are about to negotiate strategic frameworks and international goals for the decades to come.

TRY plant trait database - enhanced coverage and open access.

Plant traits-the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants-determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait-based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits-almost complete coverage for 'plant growth form'. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait-environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives.

Transforming conservation science and practice for a postnormal world.

We examine issues to consider when reframing conservation science and practice in the context of global change. New framings of the links between ecosystems and society are emerging that are changing peoples' values and expectations of nature, resulting in plural perspectives on conservation. Reframing conservation for global change can thus be regarded as a stage in the evolving relationship between people and nature rather than some recent trend. New models of how conservation links with transformative adaptation include how decision contexts for conservation can be reframed and integrated with an adaptation pathways approach to create new options for global-change-ready conservation. New relationships for conservation science and governance include coproduction of knowledge that supports social learning. New processes for implementing adaptation for conservation outcomes include deliberate practices used to develop new strategies, shift world views, work with conflict, address power and intergenerational equity in decisions, and build consciousness and creativity that empower agents to act. We argue that reframing conservation for global change requires scientists and practitioners to implement approaches unconstrained by discipline and sectoral boundaries, geopolitical polarities, or technical problematization. We consider a stronger focus on inclusive creation of knowledge and the interaction of this knowledge with societal values and rules is likely to result in conservation science and practice that meets the challenges of a postnormal world.

Sustainability limits needed for CO2 removal.

The true climate mitigation challenge is revealed by considering sustainability impacts.

Global trends and scenarios for terrestrial biodiversity and ecosystem services from 1900 to 2050.

Based on an extensive model intercomparison, we assessed trends in biodiversity and ecosystem services from historical reconstructions and future scenarios of land-use and climate change. During the 20th century, biodiversity declined globally by 2 to 11%, as estimated by a range of indicators. Provisioning ecosystem services increased several fold, and regulating services decreased moderately. Going forward, policies toward sustainability have the potential to slow biodiversity loss resulting from land-use change and the demand for provisioning services while reducing or reversing declines in regulating services. However, negative impacts on biodiversity due to climate change appear poised to increase, particularly in the higher-emissions scenarios. Our assessment identifies remaining modeling uncertainties but also robustly shows that renewed policy efforts are needed to meet the goals of the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Impacts of climate change on the future of biodiversity.

Many studies in recent years have investigated the effects of climate change on the future of biodiversity. In this review, we first examine the different possible effects of climate change that can operate at individual, population, species, community, ecosystem and biome scales, notably showing that species can respond to climate change challenges by shifting their climatic niche along three non-exclusive axes: time (e.g. phenology), space (e.g. range) and self (e.g. physiology). Then, we present the principal specificities and caveats of the most common approaches used to estimate future biodiversity at global and sub-continental scales and we synthesise their results. Finally, we highlight several challenges for future research both in theoretical and applied realms. Overall, our review shows that current estimates are very variable, depending on the method, taxonomic group, biodiversity loss metrics, spatial scales and time periods considered. Yet, the majority of models indicate alarming consequences for biodiversity, with the worst-case scenarios leading to extinction rates that would qualify as the sixth mass extinction in the history of the earth.

Climate change impacts on tree ranges: model intercomparison facilitates understanding and quantification of uncertainty.

Model-based projections of shifts in tree species range due to climate change are becoming an important decision support tool for forest management. However, poorly evaluated sources of uncertainty require more scrutiny before relying heavily on models for decision-making. We evaluated uncertainty arising from differences in model formulations of tree response to climate change based on a rigorous intercomparison of projections of tree distributions in France. We compared eight models ranging from niche-based to process-based models. On average, models project large range contractions of temperate tree species in lowlands due to climate change. There was substantial disagreement between models for temperate broadleaf deciduous tree species, but differences in the capacity of models to account for rising CO(2) impacts explained much of the disagreement. There was good quantitative agreement among models concerning the range contractions for Scots pine. For the dominant Mediterranean tree species, Holm oak, all models foresee substantial range expansion.

Scenarios and Models to Support Global Conservation Targets.

Global biodiversity targets have far-reaching implications for nature conservation worldwide. Scenarios and models hold unfulfilled promise for ensuring such targets are well founded and implemented; here, we review how they can and should inform the Aichi Targets of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity and their reformulation. They offer two clear benefits: providing a scientific basis for the wording and quantitative elements of targets; and identifying synergies and trade-offs by accounting for interactions between targets and the actions needed to achieve them. The capacity of scenarios and models to address complexity makes them invaluable for developing meaningful targets and policy, and improving conservation outcomes.

Plants may alter competition by modifying nutrient bioavailability in rhizosphere: a modeling approach.

Plants modify nutrient availability by releasing chemicals in the rhizosphere. This change in availability induced by roots (bioavailability) is known to improve nutrient uptake by individual plants releasing such compounds. Can this bioavailability alter plant competition for nutrients and under what conditions? To address these questions, we have developed a model of nutrient competition between plant species based on mechanistic descriptions of nutrient diffusion, plant exudation, and plant uptake. The model was parameterized using data of the effects of root citrate exudation on phosphorus availability. We performed a sensitivity analysis for key parameters to test the generality of these effects. Our simulations suggest the following. (1) Nutrient uptake depends on the number of roots when nutrients and exudates diffuse little, because individual roots are nearly independent in terms of nutrient supply. In this case, bioavailability profits only species with exudates. (2) Competition for nutrients depends on the spatial arrangement of roots when nutrients diffuse little but exudates diffuse widely. (3) Competition for nutrients depends on the nutrient uptake capacity of roots when nutrients and exudates diffuse widely. In this case, bioavailability profits all species. Mechanisms controlling competition for bioavailable nutrients appear to be diverse and strongly depend on soil, nutrient, and plant properties.

Long-Term Response of an Arctic Sedge to Climate Change: A Simulation Study.

It appears that polar regions of the Earth will bear the brunt of global temperature increases. Because of the ecological importance of the sedge Eriophorum vaginatum in the arctic and the large amount of data available on its growth and physiology, we chose this species as a test case to model the potential long-term response of arctic plants to global climate change. Our simulation model utilizes a mechanistic framework and includes the effects of light, temperature, season length, nitrogen availability, and CO2 concentration on E. vaginatum growth dynamics. The model was parameterized based on a series of published studies of the growth responses of E. vaginatum to nutrients and validated using (1) field studies on the growth responses of E. vaginatum to temperature and shading, and (2) the effects of elevated CO2 and temperature on E. vaginatum photosynthesis. The effect of a 50-yr period of climate change on peak biomass (overwintering biomass plus seasonal production) in E. vaginatum was explored. We use climate change here to refer to linear increases over a 50-yr period in temperature (from 8° to 13°C), season length (from 100 to 120 d), and atmospheric CO2 (from 340 to 680 @mL/L). Similarly, a wide range of nitrogen availabilities (from 9 to 18 g°m -2 °yr-1 ) was also examined because of its importance in productivity. The model predicts that a simultaneous increase in the direct effects of temperature, season length, and CO2 , with no change in nitrogen availability, will result in a slight decrease in peak biomass. A simulated long-term doubling of nitrogen availability results in an °70% increase in peak biomass, whereas with concurrent changes in climate and nitrogen availability, the model predicts a slight decline in peak biomass compared to increases in nitrogen alone. In essence, the model predicts that climate change will have substantial effects on E. vaginatum only indirectly through changes in nitrogen availability. Simulated peak biomass responds linearly up to a doubling of current nitrogen availabilities. Therefore, at low-to-moderate increases in nitrogen availability, the predicted response of E. vaginatum to climate change is linearly (and almost exclusively) dependent on our ability to predict the effects of climate change on nitrogen cycling. At nitrogen availabilities >2x current availabilities, the relationship flattens out very rapidly because the plant becomes limited by carbon uptake. Thus, if nitrogen availabilities more than double in the future, E. vaginatum may shift from being a nutrient-limited to a carbon-limited system and, consequently, increased season length and elevated CO2 concentrations may play an important role in controlling E. vaginatum productivity.

Nutrient relations in calcareous grassland under elevated CO2.

Plant nutrient responses to 4 years of CO2 enrichment were investigated in situ in calcareous grassland. Beginning in year 2, plant aboveground C:N ratios were increased by 9% to 22% at elevated CO2 (P < 0.01), depending on year. Total amounts of N removed in biomass harvests during the first 4 years were not affected by elevated CO2 (19.9 ± 1.3 and 21.1 ± 1.3 g N m-2 at ambient and elevated CO2), indicating that the observed plant biomass increases were solely attained by dilution of nutrients. Total aboveground P and tissue N:P ratios also were not altered by CO2 enrichment (12.5 ± 2 g N g-1 P in both treatments). In contrast to non-legumes (>98% of community aboveground biomass), legume C/N was not reduced at elevated CO2 and legume N:P was slightly increased. We attribute the less reduced N concentration in legumes at elevated CO2 to the fact that virtually all legume N originated from symbiotic N2 fixation (%Ndfa ≈ 90%), and thus legume growth was not limited by soil N. While total plant N was not affected by elevated CO2, microbial N pools increased by +18% under CO2 enrichment (P = 0.04) and plant available soil N decreased. Hence, there was a net increase in the overall biotic N pool, largely due increases in the microbial N pool. In order to assess the effects of legumes for ecosystem CO2 responses and to estimate the degree to which plant growth was P-limited, two greenhouse experiments were conducted, using firstly undisturbed grassland monoliths from the field site, and secondly designed `microcosm' communities on natural soil. Half the microcosms were planted with legumes and half were planted without. Both monoliths and microcosms were exposed to elevated CO2 and P fertilization in a factored design. After two seasons, plant N pools in both unfertilized monoliths and microcosm communities were unaffected by CO2 enrichment, similar to what was found in the field. However, when P was added total plant N pools increased at elevated CO2. This community-level effect originated almost solely from legume stimulation. The results suggest a complex interaction between atmospheric CO2 concentrations, N and P supply. Overall ecosystem productivity is N-limited, whereas CO2 effects on legume growth and their N2 fixation are limited by P.

A mid-term analysis of progress toward international biodiversity targets.

In 2010, the international community, under the auspices of the Convention on Biological Diversity, agreed on 20 biodiversity-related "Aichi Targets" to be achieved within a decade. We provide a comprehensive mid-term assessment of progress toward these global targets using 55 indicator data sets. We projected indicator trends to 2020 using an adaptive statistical framework that incorporated the specific properties of individual time series. On current trajectories, results suggest that despite accelerating policy and management responses to the biodiversity crisis, the impacts of these efforts are unlikely to be reflected in improved trends in the state of biodiversity by 2020. We highlight areas of societal endeavor requiring additional efforts to achieve the Aichi Targets, and provide a baseline against which to assess future progress.

Climate change and plant dispersal along corridors in fragmented landscapes of Mesoamerica.

Climate change is a threat to biodiversity, and adaptation measures should be considered in biodiversity conservation planning. Protected areas (PA) are expected to be impacted by climate change and improving their connectivity with biological corridors (BC) has been proposed as a potential adaptation measure, although assessing its effectiveness remains a challenge. In Mesoamerica, efforts to preserve the biodiversity have led to the creation of a regional network of PA and, more recently, BC. This study evaluates the role of BC for facilitating plant dispersal between PA under climate change in Mesoamerica. A spatially explicit dynamic model (cellular automaton) was developed to simulate species dispersal under different climate and conservation policy scenarios. Plant functional types (PFT) were defined based on a range of dispersal rates and vegetation types to represent the diversity of species in the region. The impacts of climate change on PA and the role of BC for dispersal were assessed spatially. Results show that most impacted PA are those with low altitudinal range in hot, dry, or high latitude areas. PA with low altitudinal range in high cool areas benefit the most from corridors. The most important corridors cover larger areas and have high altitude gradients. Only the fastest PFT can keep up with the expected change in climate and benefit from corridors for dispersal. We conclude that the spatial assessment of the vulnerability of PA and the role of corridors in facilitating dispersal can help conservation planning under a changing climate.

Biodiversity and ecosystem services science for a sustainable planet: the DIVERSITAS vision for 2012-20.

DIVERSITAS, the international programme on biodiversity science, is releasing a strategic vision presenting scientific challenges for the next decade of research on biodiversity and ecosystem services: "Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Science for a Sustainable Planet". This new vision is a response of the biodiversity and ecosystem services scientific community to the accelerating loss of the components of biodiversity, as well as to changes in the biodiversity science-policy landscape (establishment of a Biodiversity Observing Network - GEO BON, of an Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services - IPBES, of the new Future Earth initiative; and release of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020). This article presents the vision and its core scientific challenges.