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Protected areas provide thermal buffer against climate change

Climate change is pushing temperatures beyond the thermal tolerance of many species. Whether protected areas (PAs) can serve as climate change refugia for biodiversity has not yet been explored. We find that PAs of natural (seminatural) vegetation effectively cool the land surface temperature, parti...

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Autores principales: Xu, Xiyan, Huang, Anqi, Belle, Elise, De Frenne, Pieter, Jia, Gensuo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Association for the Advancement of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9629704/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36322652
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abo0119
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author Xu, Xiyan
Huang, Anqi
Belle, Elise
De Frenne, Pieter
Jia, Gensuo
author_facet Xu, Xiyan
Huang, Anqi
Belle, Elise
De Frenne, Pieter
Jia, Gensuo
author_sort Xu, Xiyan
collection PubMed
description Climate change is pushing temperatures beyond the thermal tolerance of many species. Whether protected areas (PAs) can serve as climate change refugia for biodiversity has not yet been explored. We find that PAs of natural (seminatural) vegetation effectively cool the land surface temperature, particularly the daily maximum temperature in the tropics, and reduce diurnal and seasonal temperature ranges in boreal and temperate regions, as compared to nonprotected areas that are often disturbed or converted to various land uses. Moreover, protected forests slow the rate of warming more at higher latitudes. The warming rate in protected boreal forests is up to 20% lower than in their surroundings, which is particularly important for species in the boreal where warming is more pronounced. The fact that nonprotected areas with the same type of vegetation as PAs show reduced warming buffer capacity highlights the importance of conservation to stabilize the local climate and safeguard biodiversity.
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spelling pubmed-96297042022-11-04 Protected areas provide thermal buffer against climate change Xu, Xiyan Huang, Anqi Belle, Elise De Frenne, Pieter Jia, Gensuo Sci Adv Earth, Environmental, Ecological, and Space Sciences Climate change is pushing temperatures beyond the thermal tolerance of many species. Whether protected areas (PAs) can serve as climate change refugia for biodiversity has not yet been explored. We find that PAs of natural (seminatural) vegetation effectively cool the land surface temperature, particularly the daily maximum temperature in the tropics, and reduce diurnal and seasonal temperature ranges in boreal and temperate regions, as compared to nonprotected areas that are often disturbed or converted to various land uses. Moreover, protected forests slow the rate of warming more at higher latitudes. The warming rate in protected boreal forests is up to 20% lower than in their surroundings, which is particularly important for species in the boreal where warming is more pronounced. The fact that nonprotected areas with the same type of vegetation as PAs show reduced warming buffer capacity highlights the importance of conservation to stabilize the local climate and safeguard biodiversity. American Association for the Advancement of Science 2022-11-02 /pmc/articles/PMC9629704/ /pubmed/36322652 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abo0119 Text en Copyright © 2022 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) , which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Earth, Environmental, Ecological, and Space Sciences
Xu, Xiyan
Huang, Anqi
Belle, Elise
De Frenne, Pieter
Jia, Gensuo
Protected areas provide thermal buffer against climate change
title Protected areas provide thermal buffer against climate change
title_full Protected areas provide thermal buffer against climate change
title_fullStr Protected areas provide thermal buffer against climate change
title_full_unstemmed Protected areas provide thermal buffer against climate change
title_short Protected areas provide thermal buffer against climate change
title_sort protected areas provide thermal buffer against climate change
topic Earth, Environmental, Ecological, and Space Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9629704/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36322652
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abo0119
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