Monarchy for stormy times

The climate of change for wildlife is putting conservation in a fresh perspective. English Nature's Mike Harley draws out the implications of the latest research.

Climate change happens naturally. Throughout time it has altered the Earth’s physical and biological systems. But the exceptional changes in the last century - changes that the climate modellers tell us are set to accelerate over the next hundred years - show a clear link for the first time with human activity. Huge increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution are being superimposed on natural climatic variations.

The effects may include increases in temperature, changes in patterns of rainfall, increased frequency of storms and rising sea level. And a major research project, MONARCH, has evaluated the impact on species, habitats and geological features across Great Britain and Ireland. Its findings are a fundamental challenge to current nature conservation policy, and there are far-reaching policy and practical implications, for the future management of the network of statutory protected important sites and for the wider environment.

Conservation has traditionally focused on protecting wildlife and habitat from development pressures and land use change. But the MONARCH study brings home the need to develop a new, dynamic view of nature - one that sets our conservation policy and site management practices within the context of climate change.

In eastern England, for instance, coastal sand dunes and saltmarsh may be drowned under the rising sea. Elsewhere, whilst existing sites are likely to remain the best examples of semi-natural habitat, their species composition may alter. To take just one example, the Mountain Ringlet butterfly will be lost from the uplands of northern England as temperatures increase. Furthermore, landscape fragmentation and land use pressure, together with over-riding geological and physiographic constraints, will limit the potential for habitats and species to move - the time-honoured response to climate change. Future nature conservation targets must reflect this, particularly where modifying the landscape to link or buffer isolated sites.

The MONARCH project has provided a valuable framework for studying vulnerability to climate change, and the coarse scale responses of biodiversity and geological features. English Nature and other funding partners can now begin to identify a range of appropriate conservation measures. The MONARCH results, along with those from other studies, will also be used to determine future research needs and priorities for policy development. A second phase of the MONARCH research is proposed, to capture the complex processes and interactions that are specific to ecosystems at the local level and at specific sites. This will link models for climate change and land-use change, and predictions for changes in species distribution, with models for species dispersal. This will allow nature conservation organisations to make judgements about whether species will be able to move to new areas that have developed the appropriate climatic conditions.

And if land use in those areas prevents or limits this species dispersal? No easy answers, but these are the right hard questions to be asking now.

Modelling Natural Resource Responses to Climate Change (MONARCH)

The MONARCH study:

• analyses the spatial variability of climatic factors of biological importance, to produce a bioclimatic classification of Great Britain and Ireland;
• investigates the impacts of climatic change on the geographical distribution of terrestrial species, using a specially developed model called the Spatial Estimator of the Climatic Impacts on the Envelope of Species (SPECIES);
• studies the impacts of climate change on key estuarine birds using models based on estuary shape and important climatic variables;
• conducts geologically based investigations, including likely impacts of climate change on limestone landscapes and cave systems, salt marshes, sand dunes and vegetated shingle coasts.

Results to be published: September 2001. Funding: 11-member consortium led by English Nature

Work undertaken by: climate change experts from the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford; School of Geography, University of Oxford; ADAS; British Trust for Ornithology; Environmental Resources Management. 

Mike Harley is climate change adviser at English Nature