Climate Change Threatens Giant Panda Protection in the 21st Century

By Renqiang Li, Ming Xu, M. Wong, Shuai Qiu, Xinhai Li, Davis Ehrenfeld, Dianmo Li. 2015

122 citations recorded by the source corpus.

It is increasingly recognized that biotic interactions could play a significant role in species distribution modelling. To assess the conservation effectiveness of the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) reserves in a changing climate, we combined both biotic variables (food availability) and abiotic (climatic and geographic) to project the potential changes of distribution and quality of giant panda habitats using the most recent IPCC-CMIP5 climate scenarios. Our results suggested that climate change would adversely affect giant pandas through habitat degradation, in that: (1) 52.9-71.3% of the current habitats could be lost; (2) the giant panda habitats could become more fragmented and isolated; and (3) both the quantity and quality of habitats in the current giant panda reserves could substantially contract, and approximately 20% of the reserves could lose all habitat representations in this century. Additionally, we found that climate change would make it increasingly necessary to translocate small populations of pandas from the southwestern to the northwestern part of the current distribution range to ensure population viability. Our results suggest the need for immediate change in current conservation policies and formulating adaptation plans for giant panda conservation in a changing climate. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Genetics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d1dbc98bbef41ffd03f8d380b57dfd1342492d63

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. Wei Wei
2. Wenting Xu
3. Stuart Pimm
4. R. Swaisgood
5. Zejun Zhang

In Ecology

1. Wei Wei
2. Stuart Pimm
3. R. Swaisgood
4. Zejun Zhang

In Genetics

1. Stuart Pimm
2. R. Swaisgood

Citations in the corpus

• Climate change challenges the current conservation strategy for the giant panda. (2015, background): “They predict that future suitable habitats would likely be located in high-elevation areas in the Min Shan and Liang Shan (Li et al., 2015), and the suitable habitat gradually moves north under projected global climate change (Jian et al., 2014).”
• Giant panda distributional and habitat‐use shifts in a changing landscape (2018, background): “A number of climate change models project substantive impacts on pandas’ primary food source, bamboo, and a subsequent range constriction and significant panda population declines (Fan et al., 2014; Li et al., 2015; Songer, Delion, Biggs, & Huang, 2011; Tuanmu et al., 2013; Zang et al., 2017).”