Climate change threatens native potential agroforestry plant species in Brazil

Predicting the suitable cultivation areas of breadfruit crops Artocarpus altilis (Moraceae) under future climate scenarios in Central Java, Indonesia

Artocarpus altilis, commonly known as breadfruit, is a potential crop adapted to a wide variety of climates and widely spread, including in Indonesia. However, information on how this species can adapt to climate change, in particular in Central Java, is still limited. In Indonesia, Central Java is the center for cultivation areas for many crop species to support the 145 million people living on Java Island. One of the potential crops being developed in Central Java is breadfruit. To assess the suitable cultivation areas for breadfruit, species distribution modeling (SDM) was used to predict the current and future (2050-2070) distribution of breadfruit. Two climate change scenarios, including optimistic RCP2.6 and pessimistic RCP8.5 models, were considered to represent future climate change impacts. Based on the results for both optimistic and pessimistic scenarios, the breadfruit's suitable cultivation areas will expand eastward. Implementing a mitigation climate change scenario and limiting the temperature increase to only 1°C under RCP2.6 will provide 270.967 km2 more of suitable cultivation areas for breadfruit in 2050 and 133.296 km2 in 2070. To conclude, this study provides important information on the status and potential cultivation areas for breadfruit, mainly in the Southeast Asia region. The identification of suitable areas will guide land conservation for breadfruit to support food security in this region.

Extensive range contraction predicted under climate warming for two endangered mountaintop frogs from the rainforests of subtropical Australia

Montane ecosystems cover approximately 20% of the Earth's terrestrial surface and are centres of endemism. Globally, anthropogenic climate change is driving population declines and local extinctions across multiple montane taxa, including amphibians. We applied the maximum entropy approach to predict the impacts of climate change on the distribution of two poorly known amphibian species (Philoria kundagungan and Philoria richmondensis) endemic to the subtropical uplands of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia, World Heritage Area (GRAWHA). Firstly, under current climate conditions and also future (2055) low and high warming scenarios. We validated current distribution models against models developed using presence-absence field data. Our models were highly concordant with known distributions and predicted the current distribution of P. kundagungan to contract by 64% under the low warming scenario and by 91% under the high warming scenario and that P. richmondensis would contract by 50% and 85%, respectively. With large areas of habitat already impacted by wildfires, conservation efforts for both these species need to be initiated urgently. We propose several options, including establishing ex-situ insurance populations increasing the long-term viability of both species in the wild through conservation translocations.

Impact of climate change on agricultural production; Issues, challenges, and opportunities in Asia

Agricultural production is under threat due to climate change in food insecure regions, especially in Asian countries. Various climate-driven extremes, i.e., drought, heat waves, erratic and intense rainfall patterns, storms, floods, and emerging insect pests have adversely affected the livelihood of the farmers. Future climatic predictions showed a significant increase in temperature, and erratic rainfall with higher intensity while variability exists in climatic patterns for climate extremes prediction. For mid-century (2040-2069), it is projected that there will be a rise of 2.8°C in maximum temperature and a 2.2°C in minimum temperature in Pakistan. To respond to the adverse effects of climate change scenarios, there is a need to optimize the climate-smart and resilient agricultural practices and technology for sustainable productivity. Therefore, a case study was carried out to quantify climate change effects on rice and wheat crops and to develop adaptation strategies for the rice-wheat cropping system during the mid-century (2040-2069) as these two crops have significant contributions to food production. For the quantification of adverse impacts of climate change in farmer fields, a multidisciplinary approach consisted of five climate models (GCMs), two crop models (DSSAT and APSIM) and an economic model [Trade-off Analysis, Minimum Data Model Approach (TOAMD)] was used in this case study. DSSAT predicted that there would be a yield reduction of 15.2% in rice and 14.1% in wheat and APSIM showed that there would be a yield reduction of 17.2% in rice and 12% in wheat. Adaptation technology, by modification in crop management like sowing time and density, nitrogen, and irrigation application have the potential to enhance the overall productivity and profitability of the rice-wheat cropping system under climate change scenarios. Moreover, this paper reviews current literature regarding adverse climate change impacts on agricultural productivity, associated main issues, challenges, and opportunities for sustainable productivity of agriculture to ensure food security in Asia. Flowing opportunities such as altering sowing time and planting density of crops, crop rotation with legumes, agroforestry, mixed livestock systems, climate resilient plants, livestock and fish breeds, farming of monogastric livestock, early warning systems and decision support systems, carbon sequestration, climate, water, energy, and soil smart technologies, and promotion of biodiversity have the potential to reduce the negative effects of climate change.

The likely extinction of hundreds of palm species threatens their contributions to people and ecosystems

Protecting nature's contributions to people requires accelerating extinction risk assessment and better integrating evolutionary, functional and used diversity with conservation planning. Here, we report machine learning extinction risk predictions for 1,381 palm species (Arecaceae), a plant family of high socio-economic and ecological importance. We integrate these predictions with published assessments for 508 species (covering 75% of all palm species) and we identify top-priority regions for palm conservation on the basis of their proportion of threatened evolutionarily distinct, functionally distinct and used species. Finally, we explore palm use resilience to identify non-threatened species that could potentially serve as substitutes for threatened used species by providing similar products. We estimate that over a thousand palms (56%) are probably threatened, including 185 species with documented uses. Some regions (New Guinea, Vanuatu and Vietnam) emerge as top ten priorities for conservation only after incorporating machine learning extinction risk predictions. Potential substitutes are identified for 91% of the threatened used species and regional use resilience increases with total palm richness. However, 16 threatened used species lack potential substitutes and 30 regions lack substitutes for at least one of their threatened used palm species. Overall, we show that hundreds of species of this keystone family face extinction, some of them probably irreplaceable, at least locally. This highlights the need for urgent actions to avoid major repercussions on palm-associated ecosystem processes and human livelihoods in the coming decades.

Climate Change Reveals Contractions and Expansions in the Distribution of Suitable Habitats for the Neglected Crop Wild Relatives of the Genus Vigna (Savi) in Benin

Sustainable conservation of crop wild relatives is one of the pathways to securing global food security amid climate change threats to biodiversity. However, their conservation is partly limited by spatio-temporal distribution knowledge gaps mostly because they are not morphologically charismatic species to attract conservation attention. Therefore, to contribute to the conservation planning of crop wild relatives, this study assessed the present-day distribution and predicted the potential effect of climate change on the distribution of 15 Vigna crop wild relative taxa in Benin under two future climate change scenarios (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) at the 2055-time horizon. MaxEnt model, species occurrence records, and a combination of climate- and soil-related variables were used. The model performed well (AUC, mean = 0.957; TSS, mean = 0.774). The model showed that (i) precipitation of the driest quarter and isothermality were the dominant environmental variables influencing the distribution of the 15 wild Vigna species in Benin; (ii) about half of the total land area of Benin was potentially a suitable habitat of the studied species under the present climate; (iii) nearly one-third of the species may shift their potentially suitable habitat ranges northwards and about half of the species may lose their suitable habitats by 5 to 40% by 2055 due to climate change; and (iv) the existing protected area network in Benin was ineffective in conserving wild Vigna under the current or future climatic conditions, as it covered only about 10% of the total potentially suitable habitat of the studied species. The study concludes that climate change will have both negative and positive effects on the habitat suitability distribution of Vigna crop wild relatives in Benin such that the use of the existing protected areas alone may not be the only best option to conserve the wild Vigna diversity. Integrating multiple in situ and ex situ conservation approaches taking into account “other effective area-based conservation measures” is recommended. This study provides a crucial step towards the development of sustainable conservation strategies for Vigna crop wild relatives in Benin and West Africa.