标题：Big moving day for biodiversity? A macroecological assessment of the scope for assisted colonization as a conservation strategy under global warming
期刊名称：IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science
印刷版ISSN：1755-1307
电子版ISSN：1755-1315
出版年度：2009
卷号：8
DOI：10.1088/1755-1315/8/1/012017
出版社：IOP Publishing
摘要：Future climate change constitutes a major threat to Earth's biodiversity. If anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, 21st century climate change is likely to exceed the natural adaptive capacity of many natural ecosystems and a large proportion of species may risk extinction. A recurrent finding is that the degree of negative impact depends strongly on the dispersal potential of the species. However, there is a growing realization that many, if not most species would be unlikely to disperse as fast and far as required. As a consequence, it has been proposed that species at risk should be actively translocated into unoccupied, but environmentally suitable areas that are likely to stay suitable over the next 100 or more years (assisted colonization or assisted migration). This solution is controversial, though, reflecting negative experiences with introduced exotics and probably also the traditional emphasis in conservation management on preserving a certain local, often historical situation with a static species composition, and a tendency among ecologists to think of biological communities as generally saturated with species. Using the European flora as a case study, we here estimate the main environmental controls of plant species richness, assess how the maximum observed species richness depends on these environmental controls, and based here on estimate how many species could at least be added to an area before further species additions would perhaps inevitably lead to corresponding losses locally. Our results suggest that there is substantial room for additional plant species across most areas of Europe, indicating that there is considerable scope for implementing assisted colonization as a proactive conservation strategy under global warming without necessarily implicating negative effects on the native flora in the areas targeted for establishment of translocated populations. Notably, our results suggest that 50% of the cells in Northern Europe, the likely target area for many translocations, could harbor at least 1/3 as many additional species as they have native species. However, we also emphasize that other, more traditional conservation strategies should also be strengthened, notably providing more space for nature and reducing nitrogen deposition to increase population resilience and facilitate unassisted colonization. Furthermore, any implementation of assisted colonization should be done cautiously, with a careful analysis on a species-by-species case.
