Finnish protected area network in a changing climate

(Poster)

Saija Kuusela
saija.kuusela@ymparisto.fi

Finnish Environment Institute P.O. Box 140 Mechelininkatu 34a FI-00251 Helsinki, Finland
,
Kaisu Aapala
Finnish Environment Institute P.O. Box 140 Mechelininkatu 34a FI-00251 Helsinki, Finland
,
Juha Aalto
Department of Geosciences and Geography University of Helsinki FIN-00014 Helsinki / Finnish Meteorological Institute Helsinki, Finland
,
Risto Heikkinen
Finnish Environment Institute P.O. Box 140 Mechelininkatu 34a FI-00251 Helsinki, Finland
,
Niko Leikola
Finnish Environment Institute P.O. Box 140 Mechelininkatu 34a FI-00251 Helsinki, Finland
,
Juha Pöyry
Finnish Environment Institute P.O. Box 140 Mechelininkatu 34a FI-00251 Helsinki, Finland
,
Raimo Virkkala
Finnish Environment Institute P.O. Box 140 Mechelininkatu 34a FI-00251 Helsinki, Finland

DOI: 10.17011/conference/eccb2018/107335

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Climate change is projected to cause accelerating impacts on species populations, ecosystems and the services they provide. These impacts are often likely to be negative to biodiversity. Thus traditional static nature conservation should be complemented with climate-wise conservation planning perspectives, so that the dynamic changes in species distributions and assemblages will be properly taken into account (Ref. 1). In particular, the ability of Protected Area (PA) network to support viable species populations and representative habitat types and ecosystems under global environmental changes requires urgent examination. In such assessments, it is imperative to consider also the impact of land use in the intervening landscape, as it may critically affect species movements to newly suitable areas and PAs.

PA network in Finland includes designated areas that are nationally or regionally important for the conservation of species and habitats. However, insufficient attention has been paid for investigating its performance under changing climate, and assessing which species and habitats will be most at risk and whether the PA network is able to alleviate the negative effects of climate change on populations (Ref. 2). The SUMI (‘Suojelualueverkosto muuttuvassa ilmastossa’) project (2017–2019) will provide the first in-depth assessment of the effectiveness and adaptive capacity of Finnish PA network in protecting biodiversity and supporting key ecosystem services under the growing pressures of climate change and land use. The project focuses on four work packages: the effects of climate change on species (WP1), habitat types and ecosystems (WP2), the role of biogeophysical characteristics of PAs in mitigating the impacts of climate change (WP3) and the role of PAs in carbon sequestration and storage (WP4).

In WP1, the vulnerability of species to climate and land use change will be examined based on three commonly used criteria, i.e. species exposure, adaptive capacity and sensitivity to climate change, with a particular focus on traits increasing the risk of local extinctions (e.g. limited dispersal ability, habitat specialization). In WP2, the vulnerability of habitat types to climate change is reviewed and consequent implications for conservation considered. Key habitats are boreal forests, peatlands and alpine biotopes. In examining the biogeophysical features of PAs the focus is on the potential of local climatic variability and refugia to support populations. Moreover, spatial differences in the fine-scale velocity of the climate change will be compared in different parts of the PA network to determine the most vulnerable PAs and areas. Finally, in WP4, the first national estimates of the size of carbon sink in Finnish forested PAs will be produced.

References

1. Thomas, C. D. & Gillingham, P. K. 2015. – Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 115:718-730.
2. Virkkala, R. et al. 2014. – Ecology and Evolution 4:2991-3003.

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INTRO:
Climate change and land use impacts species populations and ecosystem services and is likely negative for biodiversity. Networks of protected areas could be an important tool to mitigate some of these negative effects if they have a planning perspective that takes climate change into account. This study brings to light the importance of increasing our understanding of how climate change impacts these areas.
MERITS:
Important and possible impactful aim to assess the network of protected areas in Finland.
CRITIQUE:
There is no method stated at all. How will you assess all these different factors and with what data? There is no results, preliminary results or hypothesised results stated. I would like to see a discussion around predicted results and implementations if no results yet are available.

How will the size of the protected areas be taken into account? Are larger areas needed in case of large climate impacts in the future?

The use of so many abbreviations in the text makes it hard to read.
DISCUSSION:
The introduction describes an important part of the challenges we face today with decreasing amounts of natural areas and impacts of climate change. Assessments of protected areas in Finland can provide key information on adaptation of future management to increase their effectiveness. I would have liked to have more of this implementations discussed.

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INTRO:
Climate change has a negative effect on biodiversity, therefore it should be considered in conservation plans. There are important protected areas in Finland but their effectiveness against climate change is not deeply investigated yet. This project offers an extensive research on assessing the Finnish protected areas regarding climate change.
MERITS:
Climate change is one of the primary threats against biodiversity and it is an important topic for conservation. The project has a comprehensive plan for country wide, therefore it is expected to lead effective results for Finnish protected areas.
CRITIQUE:
The abstract only tells about what is going to be conducted but it doesn't mention any data, results or discussion.
DISCUSSION:
It would be better if we could see the preliminary results of the porject. It is hard to tell the importance of the results from the abstract.

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INTRO:
Description of the SUMI project which aims to improve the Finnish protected area network in the context of climate change pressures.
MERITS:
The four work packages will offer a new comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of the current protected area network in Finland
CRITIQUE:
The abstract covers only the project description. Few results will be presented.
DISCUSSION:
The authors described a promising and well-structured conservation project.

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INTRO:
The authors aim at investigating the ability of the Finnish protected areas (PA) network in preserving species, habitat types and ecosystems and support carbon sequestration under growing pressures of climate change and land use. In order to generate insights enabling climate-wise conservation planning they plan to conduct reserach within four working packages: (1) examining the vulnerability of species to climate and land use changes, (2) reviewing the vulnerability of habitat types to climate change, (3) assessing local climatic variability and refugia within protected areas that could potentially support populations and determining the parts of the network that are most vulnerable to climate change and finally (4) producing a first estimate of the carbon sink size of the forested parts of the PA network.
MERITS:
The authors plan to conduct very detailed research in order to assess the effectiveness of the Finnish protected area network to conserve biodiversity and support carbon sequestration under climate change. This will certainly yield important insights fit to inform national conservation planning.
CRITIQUE:
SUMI is an ambitious project, running over several years and investigating several work packages. In their abstract, the authors remain on the conceptual level, stating what they intend to research within the single packages but not mentioning which species or species groups they want to examine, which data or methods they intend to use or if they already have results for some of the work packages.
DISCUSSION:
With a big project to describe and the given space limitations of course it is difficult to provide a very detailed account of the work to be carried out in each work package. If the authors really intend to only present an overall conceptual framework at ECCB the abstract is sufficient. However as I find all of the four proposed packages very interesting I was a little disappointed to learn so little about the data and methods they intend to use for each package. Perhaps the authors already plan to focus on certain packages in their talk? In this case I would have liked to see them dedicating the last section of their abstract solely to these packages, describing them in a greater detail.

Because information on data, methods and inference is to my view not provided in this abstract, I chose "not applicable" for these sections of the review recommendation.

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INTRO:
The authors plan to evaluate climate change impacts on the Finnish protected area network.
MERITS:
The study covers both adaptation to climate change (How vulnerable are species and habitats? How do species and habitats respond to changes?) as well as mitigation options (role of protected areas in carbon storage and sequestration) and is thus of high relevance in the field of climate-smart conservation planning.
CRITIQUE:
The project focuses on four work packages which methodological approaches could not be presented in detail due to the required length of the abstract. Work package 3 is not at all described in detail. As the study seems to be ongoing, no results are shown yet. Therefore it is hard to judge the scientific relevance of the project outcomes.
DISCUSSION:
Research on incorporating adaptation to and mitigation of climate change into conservation planning is of high relevance. The study is of national importance for Finland. Assuming that the methodology is transferable to other regions - at least in the boreal zone -, it is of general conservation interest. However, there are no results yet.

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INTRO:
The project seeks important knowledge on the performance of protected areas under climate change with a wide perspective. It focuses on effects of CC from species to habitats and ecotsystems, and how different PAs can mitigate the detrimental effects of CC and store carbon.

MERITS:
The wide approach for finding answers to the important question of the role of protected areas mitigating negative effects of climate change.

CRITIQUE:
Just a personal opinion, but one should be careful when stating that research is the first of a kind as it may sound exaggerating. In this case the "first" in the sentence "The SUMI project (2017-2019) will provide the first in-depth assessment of the effectiveness and adaptive capacity of Finnish PA network in protecting biodiversity and supporting key ecosystem services under the growing pressures of climate change and land use" refers probably to "in-depth" and "in Finland". However also the authors have studied earlier the role of PAs under CC, and "in-depth" can be defined in many ways. In any case I totally agree with the authors that this is a really important matter and the research has exceptionally comprehensive approach even in a global scale.

DISCUSSION:
The study will provide evidence for protected areas mitigating the effects of climate change and evidence for efficient conservation measures againts detrimental effects of climate change.

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INTRO:
This is the presentation of a project related to evaluating the effectiveness and adaptive capacity of PA network in Finland to protect biodiversity under climate and land use changes.
MERITS:
This seems to be an important project as the climate change will affect northern latitude ecosystems more than lower latitudes in a relatively short period of time.
CRITIQUE:
The abstract includes no data and result and is just presenting the details of a project.
DISCUSSION:
I think, at the end, the study will have significant implications for PAs not only for Finland but also for other countries at northern latitudes.

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INTRO:
This study presents a project that focuses on assessing the capacity of protected areas in Finland to cover species and habitats under changing climatic and land use conditions.
MERITS:
Assessing the suitability of protected areas for protecting biodiversity under global change is a key aspect to ensure that our conservation efforts will be effective.
CRITIQUE:
It is not clear from the abstract if this is just a presentation of the project itself or if the authors will also show results.
DISCUSSION:
It would be good to know if this will focus on presenting the project, emthodology to use, etc. or if there will be also some results.