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Biodiversity and Climate Change |
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Richness of birds, mammals, and amphibians
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Visual display of the Climate Change Severity Index under one scenario on the 2020s
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Critical areas for conservation
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Potential Impacts of Climate Change on Biodiversity in Central America, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic
Mesoamerica and the Caribbean are two of the world’s twenty-five biodiversity hotspots, teeming with globally significant biodiversity. Yet, along with other pressures, climate change is threatening to push environmental conditions beyond which many species and ecosystems can exist.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) jointly recognize these important interactions, stating the needs to improve our understanding of these linkages and to “fully integrate biodiversity considerations into climate change mitigation and adaptation plans.”
In response to the call for such action, this study utilizes a novel geospatial modeling approach, integrating both climatological and biodiversity data to assess which areas might be significantly impacted by imminent changes in precipitation and temperature patterns. The general methods were classifying ecosystems, deriving species richness and endemism datasets, developing a Climate Change Severity Index, and subsequently identifying critical areas for conservation.
This study is one of the main deliverables to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Global Development Alliance (GDA) program-funded “Mainstreaming Climate Indices & Weather Derivatives into Decision-Making for Adaptation to Climate Change in Central America, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic” project, implemented by CATHALAC with the collaboration of USAID, NASA, the University of Alabama-Huntsville, ESRI, and Cable & Wireless Panama. This product greatly benefited from the input of governmental representatives of Belize, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Panama.
This work celebrates joint efforts and synergies between the climate change and biodiversity communities, inspiring us to work towards international cooperation and sustainable development for the preservation of our biodiversity.
The full report, which provides regional maps for numerous scenarios as well as a country-by-country appendix, can be found here:
• (high resolution)
• (low resolution)
Six datasets related to this study can be downloaded from the Data Portal: http://maps.cathalac.org/Portal (search: "climate change" or "biodiversity") |
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