The loss of biodiversity poses several challenges in the management of natural resources. The loss of keystone species, species redundancy, and/or unique species can lead to a loss of ecosystem services and decrease the resilience of communities to environmental stressors. Below are a list of proactive measures that natural resource managers and landowners can take to address impacts to their areas that stem from a loss of biodiversity.
• Identify ecoregions and communities most at risk, and develop landscape design options for maximizing the ability of species to persist and disperse and for communities to retain similar compositional structures.
• Evaluate the adequacy of current management indicators (e.g., species, guilds, habitat measures) in informing ecological changes and risks to biodiversity associated with climate change, and determine how they may need to be revised to improve their performance and the management responses they may invoke.
• Evaluate ecological risks and management options along major ecological transition zones within and between ecoregions to conserve important strongholds of at-risk species and communities.
• Develop biodiversity conservation opportunity and risk maps at forest and ecoregional scales that can be used to inform management about the location, vulnerabilities, and management recommendations for ecologically significant areas expected to be sensitive to climate change. For example, identify primary corridors that would facilitate latitudinal and elevational migrations of the majority of native species.
Tom DeGomez, Area Agent and Regional Specialist, University of Arizona
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