Biodiversité

A ‘Blueprint’ to save critical ecosystems and stabilize the Earth’s climate.

More than two years in development, the Global Safety Net is the first comprehensive global-scale analysis of terrestrial areas essential for biodiversity and climate resilience, totaling 50.4% of the Earth's land. The report was published in Science Advances and highlights the importance of protecting and restoring the natural world to address three converging crises -- climate change, the loss of biodiversity, and the emergence of novel viruses such as COVID-19.

Fragmentation of ecosystems leads to loss of biodiversity in the remaining habitat patches, but retaining connecting corridors can reduce these losses. Using long-term data from a large, replicated experiment, Damschen et al. show quantitatively how these losses are reduced. In their pine savanna system, corridors reduced the likelihood of plant extinction in patches by about 2% per year and increased the likelihood of patch colonization by about 5% per year. These benefits continued to accrue over the course of the 18-year experiment.

Habitat connectivity is essential for maintaining populations of wildlife species, especially as climate changes. Knowledge about the fate of existing habitat networks in a changing climate and in light of land-use change is critical for determining which types of conservation actions must be taken to maintain those networks. However, information is lacking about how multiple focal species that use similar habitats overlap in the degree and geographic patterns of threats to linkages among currently suitable habitat patches. We sought to address that gap. We assessed climate change threat to existing linkages in the southeastern United States for three wildlife species that use similar habitats but differ in the degree to which their ranges are limited by climate, habitat specificity, and dispersal ability.

Face à l’inefficacité des zonages classiques de protection pour enrayer la perte de biodiversité, la mise en connexion des habitats naturels pour permettre aux espèces animales et végétales de se déplacer est devenue un enjeu majeur des politiques environnementales. L’identification et la gestion des réseaux écologiques soulève néanmoins des difficultés face à la diversité des méthodes pour analyser la connectivité et le manque de données harmonisées à l’échelle d’un pays. L’objectif de cette étude est d’utiliser la théorie des graphes pour intégrer plus finement la connectivité fonctionnelle du paysage dans la modélisation des réseaux écologiques à différentes échelles spatiales.