In the Right Place at the Right Time: Habitat Representation in Protected Areas of South American Nothofagus-Dominated Plants after a Dispersal Constrained Climate Change Scenario

In order to assess the effects of climate change in temperate rainforest plants in southern South America in terms of habitat size, representation in protected areas, considering also if the expected impacts are similar for dominant trees and understory plant species, we used niche modeling constrained by species migration on 118 plant species, considering two groups of dominant trees and two groups of understory ferns. Representation in protected areas included Chilean national protected areas, private protected areas, and priority areas planned for future reserves, with two thresholds for minimum representation at the country level: 10% and 17%. With a 10% representation threshold, national protected areas currently represent only 50% of the assessed species. Private reserves are important since they increase up to 66% the species representation level. Besides, 97% of the evaluated species may achieve the minimum representation target only if the proposed priority areas were included. With the climate change scenario representation levels slightly increase to 53%, 69%, and 99%, respectively, to the categories previously mentioned. Thus, the current location of all the representation categories is useful for overcoming climate change by 2050. Climate change impacts on habitat size and representation of dominant trees in protected areas are not applicable to understory plants, highlighting the importance of assessing these effects with a larger number of species. Although climate change will modify the habitat size of plant species in South American temperate rainforests, it will have no significant impact in terms of the number of species adequately represented in Chile, where the implementation of the proposed reserves is vital to accomplish the present and future minimum representation. Our results also show the importance of using migration dispersal constraints to develop more realistic future habitat maps from climate change predictions.