The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released its latest report, verifying that:

• Human activities have increased greenhouse gases to their highest level in the atmosphere in 650,000 years, outweighing all other factors in causing global warming;
• Global temperatures have risen to their warmest level in 500 to 1,000 years;
• Climate change is causing more extreme weather events, such as severe storms and droughts; and
• Climate change threatens ecosystems and human-well being.

The IPCC—a group of scientists convened by the United Nations—is the world's leading authority on climate change, its potential impacts, and options for adaptation and mitigation. 

Addressing climate change is one of The Nature Conservancy’s top priorities. Using data from this latest report, we are analyzing where temperature and precipitation may change and where climate change is drastically shifting vegetation towards cooler polar areas and up mountain slopes.

With this information, the Conservancy is prioritizing which new areas need protection and developing new conservation strategies to help plants, animals and natural communities adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Tracking Changes in Vegetation Around the World

As a part of these efforts, Patrick Gonzalez, one of the Conservancy's leading global climate change scientists and an expert reviewer for the latest IPCC report, is analyzing potential vegetation shifts due to global climate change.

Gonzalez, along with scientists from the USDA Forest Service and Oregon State University, is using future emissions scenarios developed by the IPCC to frame this research.

“Climate change threatens ecosystems, human well-being, and the mission of The Nature Conservancy,” Gonzalez explains. “We have already observed climate change-caused vegetation shifts on the ground in boreal, temperate, and tropical ecosystems.”

For example, he notes that climate change has caused vegetation zones that stretch across the entire African continent to shift 16-19 miles in the last half of the 20th century.

In Alaska, warmer-weather shrubs are invading the tundra. Across the southwestern United States, piñon-juniper woodlands are shifting into ponderosa pine forest, and temperature shifts have caused extensive forest dieback, which has reduced forests across the region.

Understanding these vegetation shifts will help the Conservancy identify the places most vulnerable to climate change and inform its priority places for conservation.

Changing Conservation Plans on the State and Regional Level

Armed with information about what types of changes may occur, the Conservancy is also integrating climate change into conservation plans for specific sites or states and adapting conservation actions to account for future climate change.

In Oregon, Conservancy staff are considering how the impacts of climate change can significantly alter strategies for land and water management. With help from Gonzalez, Oregon staff are examining the ecological features of conservation targets and developing strategies to help species and systems cope with warmer temperatures and other impacts.

In Alaska, The Conservancy has recognized that the warming that is already occurring in its polar and cold temperate ecosystems has implications for conservation. We will integrate climate change factors into its statewide conservation blueprint.

"In Alaska,” Gonzalez notes, “sea ice has receded significantly, placing polar bears at risk. Permafrost has melted across significant areas and warmer temperatures are favoring spruce bark beetle infestations and forest dieback.” Future conservation efforts will incorporate these changes and help reduce the risks of catastrophic loss of the plants and animals we are trying to protect.

The latest release from the IPCC is the first of three volumes that will make up the group’s fourth assessment on climate change—referred to as the “Fourth Assessment Report.” The volume explains the history of climate change over the last hundreds of thousands of years, the progress that has been made in understanding and attributing climate change, and the projections of future changes.

Subsequent volumes of the assessment will be released in April and May, and the final report is scheduled to be ratified on May 4.

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo ©Mark Godfrey/TNC (Sunset over San Rafael Ranch Natural Area, Arizona) Photo © Mark Godfrey/TNC (street scene in Bangkok, Thailand.).