Spatial priorities for climate-change refugia and connectivity for British Columbia (Version 1.1)

Climate-informed conservation priorities in British Columbia (Version 1.1)

Territorial acknowledgement:

We respectfully acknowledge that we live and work across diverse unceded territories and treaty lands and pay our respects to the First Nations, Inuit and Métis ancestors of these places.  We honour our connections to these lands and waters and reaffirm our relationships with one another.

Suggested citation:

Stolar, J., D. Stralberg, I. Naujokaitis-Lewis, S.E. Nielsen, and G. Kehm.  2024.  Spatial priorities for climate-change refugia and connectivity for British Columbia (Version 1.1). Place of publication: University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.10603162

Corresponding author: stolar@ualberta.ca

Summary:

The purpose of this project is to identify spatial locations of (a) vulnerabilities within British Columbia’s current network of protected areas and (b) priorities for conservation and management of natural landscapes within British Columbia under a range of future climate-change scenarios. This involved adaptation and implementation of existing continental- and provincial-scale frameworks for identifying areas that have potential to serve as refugia from climate change or corridors for species migration.

Outcomes of this work include the provision of practical guidance for protected areas network design and vulnerabilities identification under climate change, with application to other regions and jurisdictions. Project results, in the form of multiple spatial prioritization scenarios, may be used to evaluate the resilience of the existing protected area network and other conservation designations to better understand the risks to British Columbia’s biodiversity in our changing climate.

Description:

These raster layers represent different scenarios of Zonation rankings of conservation priorities for climate resilience and connectivity between current and 2080s conditions for a provincial-scale analysis.  Input conservation features included metrics of macrorefugia (forward and backward climate velocity (km/year), overlapping future and current habitat suitability for ~900 rare species in BC), microrefugia (presence of old growth ecosystems, drought refugia, glaciers/cool slopes/wetlands, and geodiversity), and connectivity.  Please see details in the accompanying report.

File nomenclature:

.zip folder (Stolar_et_al_2024_CiCP_Zenodo_upload_Version_1.1.zip):
Contains the files listed below.

Macrorefugia (2080s_macrorefugia.tif):
Scenarios for each taxonomic group (equal weightings for all species) (Core-area Zonation Function)
Climate-type velocity + species scenarios from above (Core-area Zonation; equal weightings)

Microrefugia (microrefugia.tif):
Scenario with old growth forest habitat, landscape geodiversity, wetlands/cool slopes/glaciers, drought refugia (Core-area Zonation; equal weightings)

Overall scenario (2080s_macro_micro_connectivity.tif):
Inputs from above (with equal weightings) + connectivity metrics (each weighted at 0.1)  (Additive Benefit Function Zonation)

Conservation priorities (Conservation_priorities_2080s.tif):
Overall scenario from above extracted to regions of low human footprint.

Restoration priorities (Restoration_priorities_2080s.tif):
Overall scenario from above extracted to regions of high human footprint.

Accompanying report (Stolar_et_al_2024_CiCP_Zenodo_upload_Version_1.1.pdf):
Documentation of rationale, methods and interpretation.

READ_ME file (READ_ME_PLEASE.txt):
Metadata.

Legend interpretation:

Ranked Zonation priorities increase from 0 (lowest) to 1 (highest).

Raster information:

Columns and Rows: 1597, 1368
Number of Bands: 1
Cell Size (X, Y): 1000, 1000
Format: TIFF
Pixel Type: floating point 
Compression: LZW

Spatial reference:

XY Coordinate System: NAD_1983_Albers
Linear Unit: Meter (1.000000)
Angular Unit: Degree (0.0174532925199433)
false_easting: 1000000
false_northing: 0
central_meridian: -126
standard_parallel_1: 50
standard_parallel_2: 58.5
latitude_of_origin: 45
Datum: D_North_American_1983

Extent:

West  -139.061502    East  -110.430823 
North  60.605550    South  47.680823 

Disclaimer: 

The University of Alberta (UofA) is furnishing this deliverable "as is". UofA does not provide any warranty of the contents of the deliverable whatsoever, whether express, implied, or statutory, including, but not limited to, any warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose or any warranty that the contents of the deliverable will be error-free.

Funding:
  
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of Environment and Climate Change Canada, the Province of British Columbia through the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship) and the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, the BC Parks Living Lab for Climate Change and Conservation, and the Wilburforce Foundation.