Williams-Climate-change-refugia-for-terrestrial-biodiversity_0

Figure 26 (cont.): The areas with the highest 10 th percentile of immigrants and
lowest 10th percentile of emigrants, highlighting the areas with the biotic refugial
potential.
3.4.7.5 Future biodiversity hotspots
Identifying the areas with the smallest loss, and greatest gain, of species is clearly an
important way of identifying future refugia under climate change. To identify these
areas in a taxonomically representative fashion, we summed the layers in the previous
figure (Figure 23). The resulting models (Figure 24) show the areas with the most
immigrants and fewest emigrants summed over taxonomic groups. The final summed
layer identifies those places in the Australian continent that look to act as climate
change refugia across all taxonomic groups we investigated. Hereafter, we refer to
these places as the projected refugia areas for 2085. The areas that rank the highest
under this analysis are similar to those identified in the temperature distance analysis
(section 3.4.2) as well as the proportional change in richness analysis (section 3.4.4.3),
being largely confined to the south and east of Australia. High elevation areas are well
represented in the highest rankings. The high elevation areas in the central Northern
Territory such as the MacDonnell Ranges and Burt Plain stand out as some of the few
high ranking areas of central Australia. In Queensland, the high elevation areas of the
Wet Tropics, the Einasleigh Uplands and Central Mackay Coast have the highest
rankings in the state. In the south-eastern states; the New England Tablelands, South
Eastern Highlands, Victorian Midlands, south-east Tasmania and Ben Lomond contain
the greatest biotic refugial potential. A few notable high ranking areas had low
elevations: these include Nullarbor, Gawler and Kanmantoo in South Australia; and the
Murray Darling Depression, Riverina, Daring Riverine Plains and the south-east corner
across Victoria and NSW. In the Northern Territory, the Arnhem Coast was a notable
high-ranking, low elevation area.
40 Climate change refugia for terrestrial biodiversity