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Science questions for implementing climate refugia for cold-water fish as an adaptation strateby
Citation:
Ebersole, Joe, T. Morelli, C. Torgersen, D. Keenan, R. Labiosa, AND A. Fullerton. Science questions for implementing climate refugia for cold-water fish as an adaptation strateby. Annual Meeting of the American Fishries Society, Portland, OR, August 16 - 20, 2015.
Impact/Purpose:
The recognition and protection of climate refugia has been proposed as a potential adaptation strategy that may be useful for protecting biodiversity under a changing climate. Climate refugia are areas that are buffered from climate change effects relative to other areas so as to favor greater persistence of valued social, physical, and ecological resources. In the past, refugia allowed species to persist through prior periods of climate change, even as surrounding regions became unsuitable. Might refugia allow species to persist in the future? And if so, how can we best identify, protect and manage these features? In this presentation, we illustrate the utility of the refugia concept with several examples. We provide an overview of climate refugia and discuss how they can fit into the existing framework of federal management. We conclude that climate change refugia, while no panacea, could be an important tool for climate adaptation in the face of impending biodiversity losses.
Description:
Managing climate refugia has been proposed as a potential adaptation strategy that may be useful for protecting the biotic integrity of watersheds under a changing climate. Paleo-ecological evidence suggests that refugia allowed species to persist through prior periods of climate change, even as surrounding regions became unsuitable. Now managers are asking how refugia might help species persist under future climates. The potential effectiveness of climate refugia as a climate adaptation strategy has several critical uncertainties, including: What physical processes create and maintain refugia? How will these change given climate projections? At what spatial scales must these drivers be considered to maintain species within refugia? Given that paleo-refugia functioned in the absence of a significant human footprint, how will climate change and other anthropogenic stressors interact to constrain refugia effectiveness in the future? Are current data sufficient to help inform the identification of potential refugia? Are current best-condition ‘reference sites’ at risk from climate change, limiting their potential utility as refugia sentinels and endangering future detection of status and trends? What are implications for developing water quality criteria and standards? We will present these questions and explore options for effective research on the potential management of climate refugia as an adaptation strategy.