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Recommendations
Effective mitigation is predicated on
the conviction that: immediate
synergistic work is a necessity and not
a choice; collaborative effort by all
parties will be the most useful method
of devising strategies that are
conceptually relevant, technically
possible, and effective. The importance
of networking and collaboration beyond
the traditional efforts can not be
stressed enough. Strategies that explore
opportunities from all stakeholders will
be stronger than can be devised by
working in isolation. For example (IF
TRUE), Madagascar is a top global
conservation priority owing to its high
levels of endemism and extensive habitat
loss. Recently a vulnerability
assessment of climate change and
biodiversity for the island (reference
needed) was completed, addressing both
marine and terrestrial environments, and
generating a set of recommendations for
adaptation of conservation strategies
necessary to meet the challenges posed
by climate change.
While there will be a natural tendency
to fight Climate Change and preserve
existing niches, species, and systems,
flexibility and realistic appreciation
and acceptance of Climate Change in some
form can produce greater benefits and
counterbalance the changes that will
happen whether we judge them negative or
not, using our own species value system
The following are recommendations to
this end:
Encourage and facilitate collaborations
to help translate new scientific
insights into explicit conservation
planning decisions.
Develop direct feedbacks between
researchers and site-specific
conservation efforts.
Identify gaps in knowledge that can be
addressed by expert research teams
Promote science issues and research
identified via place-based learning.
Develop realistic goals for adaptation,
to evaluate ecological and socioeconomic
tradeoffs among management alternatives,
and to critically evaluate project
outcomes.
a. Mitigation: reduce emissions (policy
task)
b. Increase/improve??? Corridors or
stepping stones (Williams et al. 05)
c. Include protected areas in portfolio
of world preserves
d. Assist migration of certain species
e. Create and maintain seed banks, gene
banks
f. Create and maintain grass and other
forage banks
*****Though I like the below, I am torn
between promoting one theory/group/issue
and thus will leave it to the C4 team to
decide how to integrate. JL ****
One group in the US has started
addressing these issues head-on by
bringing around the table both field
expert and modelers to come up with a
set of recommendations based on 3
practical examples. C4 Solutions seeks
to accomplish four initial goals:
1) To generate the best possible
scientific understanding of the
biological impacts of climate change,
and thus inform science-based
conservation responses, by creating
coalitions of ecologists and land
managers and synthesizing talents among
the wider conservation community.
2) To close the gap between the
generation and application of knowledge
by linking scientists and practitioners
at local levels.
3) To improve local models of climate
change impacts, and thereby increase the
site-specific applicability of climate
models.
4) To leverage limited human and
financial resources to facilitate all of
the above.
An international group (bioDISCOVERY)
funded by the international IGBP group,
is also approaching the same problem and
has delineated a series of tasks:
Evaluate and improve the degree to which
observations, experiments and models
provide a coherent picture of past and
future changes in biodiversity ,
especially in studying the interactive
effects of multiple drivers.
Encourage syntheses of existing
observational and experimental data: for
example the impacts of fire and
herbivory on biodiversity as fire
regimes and food quality changes with
climate.
b. Support the development of a new
generation of global change experiments
that treat interactions between multiple
drivers : there have been relatively few
multi-factor, global change experiments
(but see Zavaleta 2003), but the number
is rapidly increasing in terrestrial
ecosystems. Freshwater ecosystems need
to be included in regional analyses of
climate change impacts. Combined impacts
of changes on flow regimes, vegetation
shifts and associated changes in
evaporation and transpiration fluxes,
and coastal sea level rise have not been
documented.
c. Organize comparisons of observations,
experiments and models: Changes in
species abundance and distribution in
historical or paleological records can
be used to test the response of models
to climate or habitat modification;
observed distributions of introduced
species can be used to test the capacity
of models to correctly model species
distributions in novel environments
d. Assess the potential impacts of
emerging drivers of biodiversity such as
genetically modified organisms (GMOs)
and biofuels: A number of additional
factors - such as GMOs and biofuels -
are very recently emerging as
potentially potent drivers of future
biodiversity change. The potential
positive and negative effects of these
emergent drivers must be rapidly
assessed and then included in global
change scenarios.
2. Develop improved scenarios of future
biodiversity change that explicitly
treat multiple sources of uncertainty
a. Create stronger links with climate
modelers
b. Support the improvement in the
treatment of uncertainty arising from
climate models and of biodiversity
response
c. Encourage the development of novel
approaches to modeling biodiversity
response: No biodiversity response model
currently simulates the abundance and
distribution of a wide range of species
or species groups to global change based
on mechanisms that describe functional
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