Identifying and protecting climate change refugia — areas relatively buffered from climate change that can help species persist in a warming climate — is increasingly important for conservation planning. Until recently, the approaches used to identify refugia at broad scales mainly focused on landscape features and climate conditions.
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Many natural disturbances, like wildfires, which have helped to maintain ecosystem processes and biodiversity in the past, are worsening under climate change and are threatening biodiversity. There is increasing recognition of the role of disturbance refugia — locations disturbed less severely or less frequently than the surrounding landscape — as legacies important to sustaining species under rapid ecological change.
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Human-caused climate change will rapidly alter ecosystems in the Northwest and around the world, putting species that inhabit them under severe stress. These sweeping ecological changes will leave little time for species and ecosystems to adapt to new conditions, resulting in extinctions and large-scale ecosystem transformations.
Read moreThe Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center is a partnership of:
