Modeling Impacts of Climate Change on Giant Panda Habitat

By M. Songer, M. Delion, A. Biggs, Qiongyu Huang. 2012

152 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) are one of the most widely recognized endangered species globally. Habitat loss and fragmentation are the main threats, and climate change could significantly impact giant panda survival. We integrated giant panda habitat information with general climate models (GCMs) to predict future geographic distribution and fragmentation of giant panda habitat. Results support a major general prediction of climate change—a shift of habitats towards higher elevation and higher latitudes. Our models predict climate change could reduce giant panda habitat by nearly 60% over 70 years. New areas may become suitable outside the current geographic range but much of these areas is far from the current giant panda range and only 15% fall within the current protected area system. Long-term survival of giant pandas will require the creation of new protected areas that are likely to support suitable habitat even if the climate changes.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c32534e09ae53121140deab704bf6318a4fd7c88

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecological Modeling

1. Ming Xu
2. Renqiang Li
3. Dianmo Li
4. Dajun Wang
5. Xinhai Li
6. Shuai Qiu
7. R. Swaisgood
8. M. Wong

In Ecology

1. Ming Xu
2. Renqiang Li
3. Dajun Wang
4. Xinhai Li
5. Shuai Qiu
6. R. Swaisgood
7. M. Wong
8. F. Wei

Citations in the corpus

• Panda Downlisted but not Out of the Woods (2018, background): “Although climate changemediated effects on panda habitat have not yet been detected, several models predict significant habitat loss of more than 50% in some models (Songer et al. 2011; Tuanmu et al. 2013; Fan et al. 2014; Li et al. 2015).”
• Climate change vulnerability assessment of species (2018, unknown): “…Burgess, Cabeza, Rahbek, & Araújo, 2012; Gregory et al., 2009; Hole et al., 2011), mammals (Hughes, Satasook, Bates, Bumrungsri, & Jones, 2012; Songer, Delion, Biggs, & Huang, 2012; Visconti et al., 2015), amphibians (Carvalho, Brito, Crespo, Watts, & Possingham, 2011; Lawler, Shafer,…”
• Climate Change Threatens Giant Panda Protection in the 21st Century (2015, background): “Climate change may reduce significantly both the area of giant panda habitats (Songer et al., 2012; Fan et al., 2014) and food supplies (Tuanmu et al.”