Ecosystem services show variable responses to future climate conditions in the Colombian páramos

PeerJ

article

Mauricio Diazgranados¹  Carolina Tovar²  Thomas R. Etherington²  Paula A. Rodríguez-Zorro⁴  Carolina Castellanos-Castro⁵  Manuel Galvis Rueda⁶  Suzette G.A. Flantua¹ 

[1] Natural Capital and Plant Health Department, Royal Botanic Gardens;Biodiversity Informatics and Spatial Analysis, Royal Botanic Gardens;Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research, Lincoln;Institut des Sciences de l’Évolution Montpellier ,(ISEM), Université de Montpellier;Ciencias Básicas de la Biodiversidad, Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humboldt;Departamento de Biología, Grupo de Investigación en Estudios Micro y Macro Ambientales ,(MICRAM), Universidad Tecnológica y Pedagógica de Colombia;Institute for Biodiversity & Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam;Department of Biological Sciences, University of Bergen

关键词: Boyacá;    Climate change;    Colombia;    Mahalanobis distance;    Niche modelling;    Páramo;    Useful plants;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.11370

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

Background The páramos, the high-elevation ecosystems of the northern Andes, are well-known for their high species richness and provide a variety of ecosystem services to local subsistence-based communities and regional urbanizations. Climate change is expected to negatively affect the provision of these services, but the level of this impact is still unclear. Here we assess future climate change impact on the ecosystem services provided by the critically important páramos of the department of Boyacá in Colombia, of which over 25% of its territory is páramo. Methods We first performed an extensive literature review to identify useful species of Boyacá, and selected 103 key plant species that, based on their uses, support the provision of ecosystem services in the páramos. We collated occurrence information for each key species and using a Mahalanobis distance approach we applied climate niche modelling for current and future conditions. Results We show an overall tendency of reduction in area for all ecosystem services under future climate conditions (mostly a loss of 10% but reaching up to a loss of 40%), but we observe also increases, and responses differ in intensity loss. Services such as Food for animals, Material and Medicinal, show a high range of changes that includes both positive and negative outcomes, while for Food for humans the responses are mostly substantially negative. Responses are less extreme than those projected for individual species but are often complex because a given ecosystem service is provided by several species. As the level of functional or ecological redundancy between species is not yet known, there is an urgency to expand our knowledge on páramos ecosystem services for more species. Our results are crucial for decision-makers, social and conservation organizations to support sustainable strategies to monitor and mitigate the potential consequences of climate change for human livelihoods in mountainous settings.

【 授权许可】

CC BY