The climatic risk of Amazonian protected areas is driven by climate velocity until 2050

RESEARCH ARTICLE The climatic risk of Amazonian protected areas is driven by climate velocity until 2050 Calil Torres-AmaralID1,2*, Luciano Jorge Serejo dos AnjosID1,3, Ima Ce´ lia Guimarães Vieira4, Everaldo Barreiros de Souza1 1 Postgraduate Program in Environmental Science—PPGCA, Institute of Geosciences, Meteorology Faculty, Federal University of Para´ —UFPA, Bele´m, Para´ , Brazil, 2 Postgraduate Program in Ecology and Conservation, State University of Mato Grosso, Nova Xavantina, Mato Grosso, Brazil, 3 Campus Parauapebas, Federal Rural University of the Amazon, Parauapebas, Para´, Brazil, 4 Botany Department, Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi, Bele´m, Para´ , Brazil * calil.torresamaral@gmail.com Abstract Changes in species distribution in response to climate change might challenge the territorial boundaries of protected areas. Amazonia is one of the global regions most at risk of devel- oping long distances between current and future analogous climates and the emergence of climate conditions without analogs in the past. As a result, species present within the net- work of Protected Areas (PAs) of Amazonia may be threatened throughout the 21st century. In this study, we investigated climate velocity based on future and past climate-analogs using forward and backward directions in the network of PAs of Amazonia, in order to assess the climatic risk of these areas to climate change and verify their effectiveness in maintaining the current climate conditions. Using current (1970–2000) and future (2041–

2060) average annual air temperature and precipitation data with a resolution of 10 km, cli- mate velocities across the entire Amazon biome and average climate velocities of PAs and Indigenous Lands (ILs) were evaluated. The results show that the effects of backward veloc- ity will be greater than that of forward velocity in the Amazon biome. However, the PA net- work will be less exposed to backward velocity impacts than unprotected areas (UAs)– emphasizing the importance of these areas as a conservation tool. In contrast, for the for- ward velocity impacts, the PA network will be slightly more exposed than UAs–indicating that the current spatial arrangement of the PA network is still not the most suitable to mini- mize impacts of a possible climate redistribution. In addition, a large extent of no-analog cli- mates for backward velocities was found in central Amazonia, indicating that high temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns in this region will surpass the historical variability of the entire biome, making it a potentially isolated and unsuitable climatic enve- lope for species in the future. Most of the no-analog climates are in PAs, however the climate risks in ILs should also be highlighted since they presented higher climate velocities than PAs in both metrics. Our projections contrast with the median latitudinal migration rate of 2 km/year observed in most ecosystems and taxonomic groups studied so far and suggest the need for median migration rates of 7.6 km/year. Thus, despite the important role of PAs

and ILs as conservation tools, they are not immune to the effects of climate change and new PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286457 June 22, 2023 1 / 14 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Torres-Amaral C, Anjos LJSd, Vieira ICG, de Souza EB (2023) The climatic risk of Amazonian protected areas is driven by climate velocity until 2050. PLoS ONE 18(6): e0286457. https://doi.org/ 10.1371/journal.pone.0286457 Editor: Gabriel Parra-Henao, Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia, COLOMBIA Received: August 8, 2022 Accepted: May 11, 2023 Published: June 22, 2023 Copyright: © 2023 Torres-Amaral et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Funding: We are grateful to CAPES (http://www. capes.gov.br/) for granting the master scholarship to CTA (88882.461690/2019-01). Pro´-Reitoria de Pesquisa e Po´s-Graduac¸ão/Universidade Federal do Para´ (PROPESP/UFPA-http://www.propesp. ufpa.br/) - PAPQ (Programa de Apoio à Publicac¸ão Qualificada) for payment of the publication fee, awarded to EBS. The funders had no role in study