Spatial conservation planning under climate change: toward identifying optimal adaptive management for Fagus crenata in Japan

Background/Question/Methods

Protected areas are still the foundation of modern conservation systems, but current climate change cause shift of species distribution range. Therefore, gap between protected areas and species distribution ranges under future climate condition will occur. Active management such as exclusion of the competitive species or transplantation is an alternative action for reducing the climate change impacts on species distributions. In this study, we assessed optimal actions (revision of protected area or active management) in each geographical region to build effective spatial conservation plan in Japan. The gap between the protected areas and future potential habitats (PHs) were assessed using species distribution models and 20 future climate simulations. Fagus crenata, an endemic and dominant species in Japan, was used as target species. 

Results/Conclusions

The 40 % of current PHs were predicted to lose by the changing climate. Current PHs within protected areas were predicted to be half under the future climate condition. The area of sustainable PHs without protected areas was 13 208 km², and was mainly predicted to exist in northeast Japan. These findings suggest that, in northeast Japan, revision of protected area is effective to preserve sustainable PHs under future climate change. However, the PHs of southwestern populations, which were genetically different from northeastern populations, were predicted to almost disappear both within and outside of protected areas. Active management is necessary in these regions to ensure the intraspecific genetic diversity under future climate change. We revealed that optimal conservation action differs in geographical regions within the species distribution range