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

management strategies, specific to each area and that allow adaptation to global changes, will be necessary. Introduction Climate change is predicted to become the most serious threat to biodiversity in the 21st cen- tury [1]. Among the numerous and multifaceted dimensions of climate change, there is the redistribution of climatic conditions over large spatial extensions [2, 3]. Given the spatial scale of this phenomenon, it’s impact on biodiversity is commonly related to the macroecological effect of reducing (or expanding in some cases) the geographic distribution of a species [4]. This impact directly affects the static way in which biodiversity conservation strategies are cur- rently developed. Despite the demarcation of protected areas (PAs) and indigenous lands (ILs) being considered the most efficient and economical line of defense in the global effort to pro- tect biodiversity [5–7], and although its effectiveness in controlling deforestation and other anthropogenic pressures of land use and land cover is recognized [8], even the natural commu- nities existing in these territories are not immune to climate change. Across the Amazon, an extensive network of 6983 ILs and 1170 PAs expands over 4.5 mil- lion km2 and occupies 53.6% of the biome [9]. The carbon stock of the Amazon’s PAs and ILs alone is enough to destabilize or contribute to the stabilization of the Earth’s atmosphere [10]. However, whilst PAs are subject to chronic disturbances such as deforestation and forest deg-

radation [11], evidence suggests that climate change may also limit their efficacy [12]. Ensuring the continued relevance and effectiveness of the PA network across Amazonia is therefore a critical challenge for biodiversity conservation in face of climate change [13, 14]. The spatial redistribution of biodiversity is considered one of the main ecological responses to climate change [15]. This phenomenon is likely to be particularly pronounced across the tropics where species have narrow climatic niches, making them less able to acclimatize or adapt [16], probably due to evolution under stable climatic regimes [17]. Evidence at regional [18] and continental [19] scales suggests that many tropical plant species are already shifting their geographic distributions due to warming from lowlands to Andean slopes. Among the metrics for assessing the climatic risk of biota to climate change [2], climate velocity stands out as a metric that describes the spatial change of climate variables over time, resulting in a rate of change (km/year), which from a biological perspective describes the speed that an organism needs to migrate to maintain constant climatic conditions [20]. This climatic risk assessment metric has been increasingly used in conservation planning [21], and since it uses only climate data, it is becoming indispensable for megadiverse ecosystems with absence of specific information, such as the Amazonia. Analog-based climate velocities represent the physical distance between a location and the

location where a similar climate will be found in the future. This concept can be employed in two temporal directions: forward velocity–which reflects the distance from a grid cell in a cur- rent climate to the nearest cell with similar projected future climate; and backward velocity– which reflects the distance from projected future climate cells back to the closest cell with a similar current climate [20]. The ability to calculate two different metrics allows the extraction of two ecological implications from the same cell. Forward velocity reflects the shortest dis- tance that an organism in the current landscape must migrate to track a consistent climate condition. A high forward velocity indicates a potential risk for climatically-adapted species, as they may be unable to migrate at the necessary speed (km/year). Moreover, a climate that lacks a future analog is classified as a "disappearing climate" [3, 12]. Species inhabiting cells with PLOS ONE Amazonian protected areas and climate velocity PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286457 June 22, 2023 2 / 14 design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.