Journal Article

Mapping potential environmental impacts of alien species in the face of climate change

Sciences environnementales guidées par les données (IROKO) ; Centre Inria d'Université Côte d'Azur ; Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-Laboratoire d'Informatique de Robotique et de Microélectronique de Montpellier (LIRMM) ; Université de Perpignan Via Domitia (UPVD)-Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Montpellier (UM)-Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry (UMPV)-Université de Perpignan Via Domitia (UPVD)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Montpellier (UM)-Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry (UMPV)-Institut Montpelliérain Alexander Grothendieck (IMAG) ; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Montpellier (UM)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Montpellier (UM), South African National Biodi

2025

Overview

Risk maps are a useful tool to prioritise sites for management and allocate resources where they are most needed as they can show us where impacts of biological invasions are most likely to happen or expected to be largest. Given the pace of global changes, we need to understand not only the risks under current conditions, but future risks taking these changes into account. In this study, we use Australian acacias alien to South Africa as a case study to model their potential distribution under future climate change to map their potential impacts at the middle and end of the century and the uncertainty related to three socio-economic pathways and five climatic models. The resulting risk maps across South Africa are a pioneering attempt to combine impacts of alien species with potential future distributions. We found that although climatic suitability and therefore the risk is predicted to decrease under climate change in 51,4% of the country’s area, the opposite is predicted for 26% of the area and the highly vulnerable fynbos biome remains an area with high projected impacts. Such risk maps can help us prioritise management actions and aid the development of suitable plans to protect biodiversity under current and future climate conditions. However, they have to be interpreted with caution and we highlight some shortcomings around species distribution models in general, vulnerability of ecosystems to the potential impacts, data gaps on impacts, as well as currently benign or unknown invaders, which are not included in the projections.

• Publisher: Springer Verlag,CCSD,Springer International Publishing,Springer Nature B.V
• Subject: Biodiversity / Biodiversity and Ecology / Biomedical and Life Sciences / case studies / climate / Climate change / Climate models / Climate prediction / Climatic conditions / Developmental Biology / Ecology / ecosystems / Environmental impact / Environmental management / Environmental risk / Environmental Sciences / Freshwater & Marine Ecology / Fynbos / Geographical distribution / Health risks / Introduced species / Invasive species / Life Sciences / Original Paper / Plant Sciences / risk / socioeconomics / South Africa / uncertainty
• ISBN: 0013797545000