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A socio‐ecological model for predicting impacts of land‐use and climate change on regional plant diversity in the Austrian Alps
- Source :
- Global Change Biology
- Publication Year :
- 2020
- Publisher :
- Wiley, 2020.
-
Abstract
- Climate and land‐use change jointly affect the future of biodiversity. Yet, biodiversity scenarios have so far concentrated on climatic effects because forecasts of land use are rarely available at appropriate spatial and thematic scales. Agent‐based models (ABMs) represent a potentially powerful but little explored tool for establishing thematically and spatially fine‐grained land‐use scenarios. Here, we use an ABM parameterized for 1,329 agents, mostly farmers, in a Central European model region, and simulate the changes to land‐use patterns resulting from their response to three scenarios of changing socio‐economic conditions and three scenarios of climate change until the mid of the century. Subsequently, we use species distribution models to, first, analyse relationships between the realized niches of 832 plant species and climatic gradients or land‐use types, respectively, and, second, to project consequent changes in potential regional ranges of these species as triggered by changes in both the altered land‐use patterns and the changing climate. We find that both drivers determine the realized niches of the studied plants, with land use having a stronger effect than any single climatic variable in the model. Nevertheless, the plants' future distributions appear much more responsive to climate than to land‐use changes because alternative future socio‐economic backgrounds have only modest impact on land‐use decisions in the model region. However, relative effects of climate and land‐use changes on biodiversity may differ drastically in other regions, especially where landscapes are still dominated by natural or semi‐natural habitat. We conclude that agent‐based modelling of land use is able to provide scenarios at scales relevant to individual species distribution and suggest that coupling ABMs with models of species' range change should be intensified to provide more realistic biodiversity forecasts.<br />Land‐use and climate change will have important effects on the future of biodiversity. We predict changes to the potential distribution of vascular plants in response to these two drivers in a region of the Austrian Alps. We therefore combine agent‐based modelling of land owners' decisions with species distribution modelling. We find that both drivers determine the realized niches of the studied plants, with land use having a stronger effect than any single climatic variable in the model. Nevertheless, the plants' future distributions appear more responsive to climate than to land‐use changes.
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
plant species distribution
Species distribution
Biodiversity
Climate change
010603 evolutionary biology
01 natural sciences
land-use change
Environmental Chemistry
Primary Research Article
Land use, land-use change and forestry
global change
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
General Environmental Science
biodiversity
Agent-based model
Global and Planetary Change
Ecology
Land use
business.industry
species distribution model
Environmental resource management
land‐use change
Global change
Primary Research Articles
agent-based model
plant diversity
Europe
Geography
climate change
Social ecological model
agent‐based model
business
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Global Change Biology
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....7d601f130d1f6ebac79adb87c43f1dad