Citation
Page info
Prepared by Olivia Torresan
Australia’s environment is vast and diverse, but many large areas are difficult to monitor ecologically using on-ground surveys. As the global climate shifts, figuring out where species can find suitable habitat is a pressing issue for scientists and resource managers. Modelled data is of particular importance for decision-makers to understand how future conditions will affect available habitat of Australia’s species. These data improve decision-makers’ ability to plan and prioritise national- and state-level restoration and conservation initiatives.
In this paper, Archibald & colleagues use species occurrence data from the Atlas of Living Australia, Queensland Museum & CSIRO along with environmental and climatic data to predict potential habitat suitability maps under different climate scenarios for 1,382 terrestrial vertebrates and 9,251 vascular plants at 5 km2. These climate scenarios are based on varying levels of potential emission intensities and their projected impact to temperature.
The resulting species maps and tables are openly available for researchers and managers to improve conservation planning and species management.
