GUIDELINES / 2.0 Biodiversity
2.6 Climate Change and Corridors
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Current and projected climate change may have significant impacts on biodiversity and other resources. Corridors and buffers may potentially affect these impacts in several ways:
- Reduce greenhouse gases (see 4.2, 4.7, and 4.8).
- Allow species to migrate as climate changes.
- Protect sensitive areas from increased climatic events such as floods and storm surges along coastal areas.
- Provide habitat that offers range of microclimate refugia.
Corridors may be of limited value for biodiversity if climate change occurs at a rate too fast to allow for migration and may end up just benefiting species that are highly mobile and adaptable, including invasive species.
Key Design Considerations
- Corridors for climate change may be best suited for landscapes that are less modified by human development.
- Broad connectivity zones may be more effective than distinct and narrow corridors (see 2.4).
- A strategy of stepping stones and corridors may offer the most opportunities for dispersal and migration (see 2.7).
- Corridors that cross elevation zones may allow migration in mountainous landscapes.
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Key Design Considerations (continued)
- Locate corridors and patches to provide climate refugia at multiple spatial scales.
- Include a range of geological substrates and soils to meet different plant requirements.
- Riparian buffers may help mitigate temperature changes in streams due to climate change (see 2.12).
- Orientate corridors along projected changes in climatic gradients.
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When establishing new, long-term plantings, it may be useful to select plants that may be adapted to the changing climate. Atlases of woody plant distributions under modeled climate change can serve as a guide and may offer insight on which species will require more migration to persist. Search the Web for Climate Change Atlas for Tree Species.
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