A climate‐change vulnerability and adaptation assessment for Brazil's protected areas.

GLO:FQU/01apr20:cobi13405-fig-0002.jpg PHOTO (COLOR): Vulnerability of 993 Brazilian protected areas (PAs) to climate change relative to (a) number of areas within Brazilian ecological regions, (b) number of areas among PA objectives, (c) area among ecological regions, and (d) area among PA objectives. The ecosystem maintenance pathway (low resilience and low exposure to climate change) should be used alone in only 3 PAs that are highly affected by human activity, mainly in inland Atlantic Forest, and used in combination with refugia pathway in 92 PAs also located mostly in the Atlantic Forest. A more comprehensive consideration of climate change impacts on flora and fauna inside PAs through a method that unifies process-based and niche modeling could be a next step to assess PA climate change risks. The integrity of Brazil's remaining native vegetation within and outside these PAs is imperiled as long as knowledge of the effects of climate change on species distribution and on the community- and ecosystem-level responses to climate change remains superficial (Dawson et al. [6]; Settele et al. [45]). [Extracted from the article]