Integrating climate extremes with key biodiversity areas for improved biodiversity risk analysis and protected area planning

Several strategies have been proposed and implemented to track the progress of land protection efforts aimed at preserving biodiversity-rich areas.In recent years, emphasis has been placed on developing tracking and decision-making strategies that promote holistic understanding of the context in which these regions are located.This includes additional information on potential threats from climate change.In particular, extreme climate events are believed to have a uniquely disruptive effect on species, increasing the urgency of including potential extreme climate threats in biodiversity reporting metrics.We propose a strategy to incorporate extreme climate indices with spatially defined areas important for biodiversity, using South Africa as an example.We leverage variability in climate to estimate near-term changes in extremes for Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) from 2015-2036 and calculate the expected change in climate hazard compared to its historical average for all KBAs the region.We find that there is a considerable gap between KBAs that are designated as climate threatened and KBAs where climate models estimate increases in at least one extreme event indicator.In more cases than not, the KBAs that show likely annual increases in more than one extreme indicator are not designated as climate threatenedincluding some of the KBAs with the highest projected changes in climate exposure relative to others in South Africa.Further, we note that the high spatial variability in potential KBA exposure to extreme climate events across South Africa combined with the prevalence of nationallygoverned protected areas offers an opportunity for systematic country-level review of climate threats at a spatial scale that is relevant to the internationally promoted decision-making strategies for land protection.