Protected areas may not effectively support conservation of endangered forest plants under climate change

TLDR: Wang et al. as mentioned in this paper applied species distribution modeling to project suitable habitats of endangered forest plants, and used geographical information system to compute whether protected areas could support the conservation of endangered forests plants.

Abstract: Protected areas (PAs) play an important role in the conservation of valuable forest resources, and an increasing number of areas are being designated as PAs worldwide. However, climate change could drive endangered forest plants out of PAs, and impact the function of PAs to conserve endangered forest plants. Hence, it is necessary for conservation biologists to put forward a simple method to evaluate the ability of PAs to conserve endangered forest plants. Here, we studied 61 endangered forest plants from three ecoregions in China. We applied species distribution modeling to project suitable habitats of endangered forest plants, and used geographical information system to compute whether PAs could support the conservation of endangered forest plants. With climate change caused by increasing gas concentration, the overall ability of PAs to support the conservation of endangered forest plants will likely decrease compared to the conservation needs of ecoregions. We found that PAs have varying abilities to conserve endangered forest plants in different ecoregions. For temperate broadleaf mixed forests and tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests, we found that climate change will decrease the PAs’ ability to support the conservation of endangered forest plants effectively in the existing forest landscape. In contrast, we found that temperate conifer forests will likely remain effective. Using this information, we proposed the conservation plans for different ecoregions under climate change. For PAs with limited ability to support the conservation of endangered forest plants in an ecoregion, we recommend expanding the areas of forests and PAs based on the suitable habitats of the endangered forest plants. For PAs with stable ability to support the conservation of endangered forest plants in an ecoregion, we recommend expanding the conservation areas in PAs.

Full text

ERRATUM
Erratum to: Protected areas may not effectively support
conservation of endangered forest plants under climate change
Chun-Jing Wang
1
•
Ji-Zhong Wan
1
•
Gang-Min Zhang
1
•
Zhi-Xiang Zhang
1
•
Jing Zhang
1
Published online: 27 April 2016
Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016
Erratum to: Environ Earth Sci (2016) 75:466
DOI 10.1007/s12665-016-5364-4
The author wishes to correct the following errors in the
original publication of the article.
The original version of this article unfortunately con-
tained mistakes. The sentence in the section Materials and
methods ‘‘Study area’’, ‘‘Our study area includes mainland
China, which covers a total area of 9.6 9 106 km
2
’’ is
incorrect. Th e correct sentence should be: ‘‘Our study area
includes mainland China, which covers a total area of
9.6 9 10
6
km
2
’’.
The sentence in the section Materials and methods
‘‘Environmental data’’, ‘‘We used eight bioclimatic vari-
ables at a 10-arc-min spatial resolution (16 km
2
) to model
suitable habitats of species using the WorldClim database’’
is incorrect. The correct sentence should be: ‘‘We used
eight bioclimatic variables at a 10-arc-min spatial resolu-
tion (256 km
2
) to model suitable habitats of species using
the WorldClim database (
http://www.worldclim.org)’’.
The sentence in the Results section, ‘‘We found that
PAs such as Xingdoushan and Jinfoshan would have a
relatively weak ability to support the conservation of
endangered forest plants in both low and high concen-
tration scenarios, and other PAs, such as Huanglianshan,
Baidongheshuiyuanlin and Chunxiushuiyuanlin, would not
be able to support these plants’’ is incorrect. The correct
sentence should be: ‘‘We found that PAs such as Xing-
doushan and Jinfoshan would have a relatively weak
ability to support the conservation of endangered forest
plants in both low and high concentration scenarios, and
other PAs, such as Huanglianshan, Baidongheshuiyuanlin
and Chunxiushuiyuanlin, would be able to support these
plants’’.
The online version of the original article can be found under
doi:
10.1007/s12665-016-5364-4.
& Zhi-Xiang Zhang
zxzhang@bjfu.edu.cn
Chun-Jing Wang
wangchunjing00@163.com
1
School of Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University,
Beijing 100083, China
123
Environ Earth Sci (2016) 75:803
DOI 10.1007/s12665-016-5578-5