Lara J. Hansen

Designing Climate-Smart Conservation: Guidance and Case Studies

To be successful, conservation practitioners and resource managers must fully integrate the effects of climate change into all planning projects. Some conservation practitioners are beginning to develop, test, and implement new approaches that are designed to deal with climate change. We devised four basic tenets that are essential in climate-change adaptation for conservation: protect adequate and appropriate space, reduce nonclimate stresses, use adaptive management to implement and test climate-change adaptation strategies, and work to reduce the rate and extent of climate change to reduce overall risk. To illustrate how this approach applies in the real world, we explored case studies of coral reefs in the Florida Keys; mangrove forests in Fiji, Tanzania, and Cameroon; sea-level rise and sea turtles in the Caribbean; tigers in the Sundarbans of India; and national planning in Madagascar. Through implementation of these tenets conservation efforts in each of these regions can be made more robust in the face of climate change. Although these approaches require reconsidering some traditional approaches to conservation, this new paradigm is technologically, economically, and intellectually feasible.

Solar UV Radiation Enhances the Toxicity of Arsenic in Ceriodaphnia dubia

Extensive research exists regarding the toxicity of metals (including arsenic) to aquatic invertebrates. However, there has been little consideration of potential synergies between metals and ultraviolet (UV) radiation–despite considerable debate on this topic in human health research. Ultraviolet radiation is nearly ubiquitous in the natural environment, but it is generally overlooked as a confounding variable in toxicological assessments. We evaluate synergies between arsenic and solar UV radiation using the crustacean, Ceriodaphnia dubia. Both laboratory (with simulated solar radiation) and outdoor (with natural solar radiation) factorial experiments were performed with two intensities of UV (low and high) and four arsenic concentrations (0, 1, 1.25 and 1.5mg/l). The laboratory experiment was multigenerational, examining survival and fecundity effects. The combination of high UV+1.5mg/l As adversely impacted survival; whereas, High UV+0mg/l As and Low UV+1.5mg/l As treatments did not. These results suggest synergism. This pattern was consistent for all three generations. Fecundity effects were not consistent across generations, and arsenic was demonstrated to have a greater impact than UV. Outdoor experiments were limited to assessing survival. Exposures in September 1999 resulted in a pattern similar to that in the laboratory exposure. High UV+1.5mg/l As treatment elicited diminished survival as compared to high UV+0mg/l As and low UV+1.5mg/l As. These results indicate that a synergistic effect between arsenic and UV exposure is possible under ambient conditions and within a relatively narrow dose range. The mechanism of this effect is unknown but could include synergistic genotoxic or oxidative stress. These findings point to the importance of using realistic UV exposures when determining criteria for protection of aquatic life.

Climate Change and Its Effects

For better or worse, climate change is affecting many elements of the world around us. We can incorporate this reality into our planning or we can ignore it, but the climatic changes currently under way will continue regardless. Species ranges will continue to shift, the timing of seasonal events will continue to change, and weather patterns will no longer follow familiar paths. If we fail to look at how our policies and practices might be affected by these changes, we run the risk of investing time, money, and political capital in plans that are at best irrelevant and at worst maladaptive. This is true for any sector or activity influenced by climatic conditions, be it resource management, development, or conservation. Climate change is not the only important consideration for conservation or natural-resource planning, but ignoring it would be as shortsighted as ignoring the possible influence of land use, pollution, or invasive species.

The role of the egg jelly coat in protecting Hyla regilla and Bufo canorus embryos from ultraviolet B radiation during development.

BackgroundPrevious studies have suggested that Ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation may play a role in amphibian population declines. Some of these studies also indicate that egg hatching success is unaltered in some species of anurans as a result of UVB exposure. It has been proposed that the egg mass jelly provides photoprotection to the developing embryos.MethodsDirect spectrophotometric scans of egg jelly, scans of egg jelly methanol extracts, and experimental manipulation in a solar simulator during development were all used to assess the role of egg mass jelly as a photoprotective agent.Results/DiscussionForHyla regilla, scans of egg jelly and methanolic extracts (for mycosporine-like amino acid content) both displayed no absorption in the UV range. Experimental manipulation (removal of egg mass jelly) with bothHyla regilla andBufo canorus egg masses in a solar simulator demonstrated that egg mass jelly played no apparent role in photoprotection of either of these species.ConclusionsBased on the results in this study it seems unlikely that the egg jelly coat is playing a crucial role in protecting developing embryos from the impact of UVB radiation.

Conservation and toxicology: The need to integrate the disciplines

Global warming, ultraviolet radiation, and acid rain are large-scale environmental problems that concern conservation biologists. They are caused, to varying degrees, by humangenerated pollution, and consequently they are studied by environmental toxicologists. These problems seem to be the major areas of overlap between conservation biologists and environmental toxicologists. This limited overlap is probably the result of the disciplines involved. Scientists tend to specialize, not taking advantage of the ideas and information in other fields, and environmental toxicologists and conservation biologists focus on different levels of biological organization. We believe it is time for conservation biologists and environmental toxicologists to become more aware of their shared goals. Consider the statement of goals listed in the major journals of each field. Conservation Biology seeks ‘‘. . . to help develop the scientific and technical means for the protection, maintenance, and restoration of life on this planet—its species, its ecological and evolutionary processes, and its particular and total environment.’’ Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry is ‘‘. . . a forum for professionals in academia, industry, government, and other segments of society involved in the use, protection, and management of the environment for the enhancement of ecological health and human welfare.’’ These statements are actually quite similar. Yet the mention of conservation biology by environmental toxicologists or of environmental toxicology by conservation biologists is rare. In the past two years of Conservation Biology, only eight articles out of 394, or 2%, discussed pollutant-related environmental damage. Likewise, only 56 articles out of 560 in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, or 10%, discussed conservation issues relating to the effects of environmental contamination. These percentages are based on a liberal survey of the literature, wherein an article need only allude to the conservation implications of a toxicological study or the existence of a toxicological impact on conservation issues to be included. For example, mention of global warming in a conservation article even without the mention of the causes of global warming would result in inclusion in the above totals. One of the major interests of conservation biologists is conducting population viability analyses to determine the probability of extinction of populations or species. Essential to calculating extinction risk is the tenet that larger populations are at a lower risk of extinction [1]. Shaffer [2] pointed out that populations affected by environmental uncertainty and catastrophe require greater minimum population sizes to persist. Although conservation biologists typically are concerned with factors such as habitat destruction and fragmentation or the introduction of exotic species, chemical contaminants can cause major extinction events or may act subtly in concert with other factors to compound the probability of extinction. As a catastrophe, a large-scale event such as an oil spill, a nuclear accident, or the release of an untreated effluent can

Assessing Vulnerability to Climate Change

Thus far, this book has focused on why adapting to climate change is important, and on general principles for actually doing it. How can we turn all this into actual projects, or apply it to our own work? The first step is to assess the ways in which our goals and the species, places, and processes we care about are vulnerable to climate change. Understanding sources of vulnerability forms the basis for developing adaptation strategies; knowing the relative vulnerability of different species, places, or resources can help to prioritize where and how to focus our efforts.

The Role of Connectivity

Increasing connectivity is perhaps the most frequently recommended adaptation strategy for maintaining biodiversity in the face of climate change (Heller and Zavaleta 2009). Based on well-documented negative effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on species richness, practitioners have long assumed that the ability of species to move easily across habitats must play an important role in maintaining biodiversity. In the face of climate change, connectivity may become even more important, given its potential to support natural adaptive responses. Connectivity along climatic gradients may facilitate populations’ ability to track appropriate climatic conditions, for instance, or allow the flow of genes from warm-adapted populations to those in cooler but warming parts of a species’ range.

Integrating the Needs of Nature and People

The focus of this book is the conservation and management of natural resources. Yet even practitioners whose focus is not human welfare would benefit from incorporating human needs and uses into their planning. The alternatives—walling off protected areas, policing them vigorously, expecting people to obey laws regardless of their own circumstances, or simply ignoring human concerns altogether—are frequently impractical, expensive, or ineffective. This will be particularly true as climate change decreases the reliability of systems on which people have come to depend. Thus climate change vulnerability assessments and adaptation planning for species, habitats, and ecosystems should consider how humans might respond to climate change or its effects, and how this might influence the vulnerability of natural systems to climate change. Adaptation plans that anticipate and incorporate the opportunities and challenges resulting from human responses are almost certainly more robust than those that do not.

Regulating Pollutants in a Changing World

Societies have made great strides in reducing the damage of environmental pollutants by enacting regulations, implementing testing and monitoring criteria, and developing treatment strategies to reduce toxicity and damage. Although new challenges do arise (e.g., low-dose toxicity issues with some plasticizers), efforts to date have led to higher air, water, and soil quality in many regions. Climate change, however, points to a glaring limitation of our current regulatory system. The testing procedures on which current regulatory limits are based do not generally reflect real-world exposure conditions, and certainly do not reflect a world in which temperature, salinity, and a host of other factors are changing as a result of climate change. Although regulatory limits for some pollutants specifically address season or local water chemistry, this is not the norm.

Strengthening Protected Areas

Protected areas have long been viewed as a primary tool of conservation biology (Groom et al. 2006). They are conceptually simple—protect space in which species or habitats of concern can exist—and legally simple—designate space and regulate allowable uses. However, as climate change alters the conditions that allow species and habitats currently in protected areas to continue to exist there, we may need to rethink protected area utility and implementation. In particular, we need to consider, as part of our climate change adaptation strategy, ways in which protected areas are vulnerable to climate change and ways in which we can make them more robust and useful as tools of adaptation.