Climate change is affecting the distribution, abundance, and persistence of species and ecosystems around the world [1]. As natural resource managers are tasked with maintaining and protecting species and ecosystems from the effects of a changing climate, options for minimizing impacts are needed. Options for climate adaptation—the policy and management actions taken to minimize negative effects of climate change—include transition, resilience, and resistance strategies [2]. Transition, or response, strategies focus on allowing inevitable changes to certain attributes of an ecosystem or species (e.g, species composition or ranges), while maintaining ecosystem function and/or desired ecosystem services.
Climate change refugia management is not a universal solution. It can be costly, time-consuming, and will only be effective, at least for its original objective, until the climate changes too much for that resource in that place. It is best practiced along with other strategies, including tracking geographic shifts in refugial habitats to keep pace with climate change or maintaining genetic material in seed banks. There is also uncertainty about the scale at which climate change refugia should be identified and managed, the duration of their effectiveness, and how to incorporate multiple species or other resources that will respond to climate change in different ways. Nevertheless, if considered by multiple partners using a network approach, managing climate change refugia for local persistence of valued resources can gain time for systems to adapt and for longer-term solutions to be developed. If regulations or policy require a focus on short-term, immediate protection of high vulnerability areas, limited budgets and staff time might require a tradeoff between managing climate change refugia and other priorities. Managers may need to weigh short-term benefits of conservation of currently limiting habitat against long-term benefits of managing for habitats that are likely to become limiting in the future. Ultimately, a mix of strategies, including distributing management actions across areas with a range of climate vulnerabilities, might be the most effective path.
Morelli, T.L.; Millar, C. 2018. Climate Change Refugia. USDA Forest Service Climate Change Resource Center. https://www.fs.usda.gov/ccrc/topics/climate-change-refugia
