Land use configuration shapes climate change risk to gallery forests in a savannah ecosystem

Abstract

Interactions between anthropogenic pressures make it difficult to predict biodiversity change and plan conservation interventions. Climate change is expected to drive widespread ecological change in the tropics over the coming decades, but it is unclear where and when these changes are going to intensify, or reduce, the impacts of additional pressures from human land use. To address this uncertainty, we apply a novel risk assessment framework to show how land use configuration modifies risks arising from climate change to gallery forests, an important vegetation type in tropical savannahs. Our analysis shows that the spatial distribution of climate change (specifically, change in annual rainfall) interacts with the spatial distribution of land use (specifically, cropland), as well as the biophysical context of the study site (the W-Arly-Pendjari transboundary protected area in West Africa), to shape the risk that changes in rainfall pose to gallery forests in the region. Due to the pathways by which rainfall change and land use interact, risks are especially elevated in core protected areas, warranting particular attention from conservation managers. Overall, our work illustrates how unexpected patterns in risks can arise through interactions between pressures on biodiversity, highlighting the importance of considering mechanistic pathways for predicting biodiversity outcomes under multifacetted global environmental change.