Austral Yungas under future climate and land-use changes scenarios: the importance of protected areas for long-term amphibian conservation

Abstract

We estimated the potential distribution for 31 amphibian species inhabiting the threatened Austral Yungas under current and future climate projections (2050’s) and assessed the synergistic effects of both climate and land-use changes on the spatio-temporal patterns of species richness. Then, using ZONATION software, we assessed the role of existing protected areas (PAs) in determining the species’ representativeness and identified priority conservation areas where we expect species to persist in the face of these global threats. Overall, we estimated a general decrease in local species richness across ~ 41% of Yungas sites due to the effects of climate changes through the year 2050. Over 60% of species are forecasted to reduce drastically (more than 75%) their distributional ranges. Also, we observed a significant reduction (15.5%) in the proportion of PAs holding the potential distributional areas of species in new climate conditions. Therefore, well-informed decisions to guide conservation strategies are imperative. Our prioritization analyses showed that strategically increasing 0.7% the protection coverage (i.e. 17%, as stipulated in the Aichi targets) there are great opportunities for improving their conservation in the region, reaching on average the 19% of distributions for all species and 32.5% of those threatened and Data Deficient amphibians. Fortunately, the highest diversity of amphibians in the region does not match the places targeted for agriculture expansion in future scenarios. Here, we provided novel evidence about where future conservation efforts should focus to accomplish the long-term conservation of biodiversity in this South American hotspot.