Twenty years on, what don’t we know about climate change?

Phil Gibbons and Adam Felton
ScienceAlert 10 Dec 09;

The first scientific papers specifically considering the impacts of anthropogenic climate change on ecosystems were published 20 or more years ago. So, sufficient time has elapsed to explore where the major gaps are in this topical area of research.

A group of researchers at The Australian National University (with AEDA researchers playing a leading role) in collaboration with scientists from Europe and North America sought to identify these gaps by examining 248 journal articles from the climate change literature.

Despite a 20 year history of research in this field, the results revealed a paucity of long-term data on species responses to a changing climate. Most studies (71 per cent) were either based on predicting future trends using data taken from a recent snap-shot in time or were qualitative.

Biogeographic biases

There was a strong bias in research effort towards the temperate ecosystems of North America and Europe. This trend is pervasive throughout the conservation literature generally due to patterns of research funding. However, there may be some scientific justification for this bias because major impacts of climate change are being felt at higher latitudes.

The corollary of this is few peer-reviewed scientific articles emanating from South and Central America, and some regions within Africa and Asia. Many tropical species have restricted niches, and are potentially susceptible to even small alterations in climatic conditions. For example, some of the first climate change related extinctions noted worldwide occurred within Latin America.

Trees were the primary taxonomic focus of research related to climate change. This reflects the economic importance of forest industries in North America and Europe and raises the perennial question about economic imperatives dictating the nature of ecological research.

Compared with the general conservation literature, a large proportion of studies examined invertebrates. Invertebrates can be well suited to studies examining climate change because many have short generation times and can be sampled in large numbers.

Several taxa were under-represented in the literature. For example, the highly threatened status of a large number of amphibian species combined with their apparent sensitivity to climate change makes them obvious candidates for further research.

Roughly half of the studies surveyed did not address climate change in the context of other anthropogenic threats, despite strong evidence that the effects of climate change on species and ecosystems will exacerbate (and in turn be exacerbated by) habitat loss and fragmentation, exotic and invasive species, and the over-harvesting of species.

Policy recommendations

Despite our search criteria directly targeting those papers that would be relevant to conservation and management, it was notable that over 10 per cent of papers did not contain any recommendations for policy-makers.

Of the papers that did make recommendations, more than half advocated an increase in monitoring and research which, while probably justified, is of limited use for policy-makers making immediate decisions about climate change.

Besides more research and monitoring, the most common policy recommendations were: increase protection inside and outside of reserves, maintain and enhance functional connectivity , minimise stressors not related to greenhouse gas emissions (eg, land clearing), translocate species, and maintain or restore resilience in natural ecosystems.

Despite an existing bias towards ecological research in undisturbed environments, a large percentage of climate related studies identified the need to take actions outside reserves. This reflects the impact of human modification on the ability of many species to migrate in response to climate change. This may in turn explain the number of papers (10 per cent) that recommend the costly — and risky — option of translocating species.

Filling the gaps

The countries where there is the least research on climate change are also the countries with the lowest adaptive capacity. Adaptive capacity is the ‘‘general ability of institutions, systems, and individuals to adjust to potential damage, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with the consequences.’’ Low adaptive capacity coincides with the relatively poorly studied areas of Latin America,
Africa and South Asia.

The highest rates of contemporary land clearing—which is likely to exacerbate the effects of climate change on species and ecosystems—also occur in countries from these regions of the world.

The investigators concluded that researchers with expertise in climate change need to partner with scientists and governments from the regions of the world that: (1) support some of the most biodiverse ecosystems and assemblages, (2) have the highest rates of ecosystem modification and (3) are the least resourced to conduct the necessary research on the effects of climate change on species and ecosystems.

More info: philip.gibbons@anu.edu.auThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Felton A, J Fischer, DB Lindenmayer, R Montague-Drake, AR Lowe, D Saunders, AM Felton, W Steffen, NT Munro, K Youngentob, J Gillen, P Gibbons, JE Bruzgul, I Fazey, S Bond, CP Elliott, BCT Macdonald, LL Porfirio, M Westgate & M Worthy (2009). Climate change, conservation and management: an assessment of the peer-reviewed scientific journal literature. Biodiversity and Conservation 18, 2243-2253.