Assessing biophysical and socio-economic impacts of climate change on regional avian biodiversity

Climate change threatens biodiversity directly by influencing biophysical variables that drive species' geographic distributions and indirectly through socio-economic changes that influence land use patterns, driven by global consumption, production and climate. To date, no detailed analyses have been produced that assess the relative importance of, or interaction between, these direct and indirect climate change impacts on biodiversity at large scales. Here, we apply a new integrated modelling framework to quantify the relative influence of biophysical and socio-economically mediated impacts on avian species in Vietnam and Australia and we find that socio-economically mediated impacts on suitable ranges are largely outweighed by biophysical impacts. However, by translating economic futures and shocks into spatially explicit predictions of biodiversity change, we now have the power to analyse in a consistent way outcomes for nature and people of any change to policy, regulation, trading conditions or consumption trend at any scale from sub-national to global.

Automated summary

Climate change poses a threat to biodiversity both directly through biophysical variables and indirectly through socio-economic changes. By using an integrated modeling framework, researchers have found that the impact of biophysical changes on avian species outweighs that of socio-economically mediated impacts. This framework allows for the analysis of potential outcomes for nature and people on various scales in response to policy changes or consumption trends.