Refugia: identifying and understanding safe havens for biodiversity under climate change

ABSTRACT Aim Identifying and protecting refugia is a priority for conservation under projected anthropogenic climate change, because of their demonstrated ability to facilitate the survival of biota under adverse conditions. Refugia are habitats that components of biodiversity retreat to, persist in and can potentially expand from under changing environmental conditions. However, the study and discussion of refugia has often been ad hoc and descriptive in nature. We therefore: (1) provide a habitat‐based concept of refugia, and (2) evaluate methods for the identification of refugia. Location Global. Methods We present a simple conceptual framework for refugia and examine the factors that describe them. We then…

• CU
  Curtin University of Technology
• AR
  Australian Research Council