COS 85-6 - Development of a methodological technical sheet for the SDG 15 response, Red List Index metric: Case of a spectacled bear pilot study in South America.
PhD. student Montana State University Bozeman, Montana, United States
Background/Question/Methods
The United Nations General Assembly in 2015 adopted the 17 SDGs to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all by 2030. To support Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, the NASA-funded Project called “Maintaining Life on Land (SDG15) under Scenarios of Land Use and Climate Change” arises. One of the targets for SDG 15, is halting biodiversity loss, which imposes demands on science and research to support national implementation. These countries selected a total of 21 vertebrates for conservation purposes, from which we selected one species as a pilot for habitat modeling to support the SDG 15 reporting.
How is the habitat suitability for Tremarctos ornatus under current climate conditions and in scenarios of climate change?
To determine the area of suitable habitat for this species, the Maxent algorithm was used after analyzing its response based on its AUC, COR, TSS and deviance with other methods.
MaxEnt predicts RORs as a function of the environmental predictors at that location. Our reference or historical period was from 1970 to 2000 and projections were made for 2050 (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5). Historical and future climate models were obtained from the WorldClim dataset (www.worldclim.org) used as part of the CMIP5.
Results/Conclusions
The resulting maps were obtained at a resolution of 1 km2 and the observed data of the spectacled bear was provided by the countries. Also, databases such as GBIF was used. The variable with the highest percentage contribution (38.5%) was BIO 4 (Temperature Seasonality (standard deviation ×100), and the variable with the highest permutation percentage (94.8%) was BIO3= Isothermality (BIO2/BIO7) (×100). Out of a total of 19 bioclimatic variables. The area of suitable habitat for this species was classified into 5 classes: < 0.20 (Non-potential), 0.21 - 0.40 (Low), 0.41 - 0.60 (Moderate) and > 0.61 (High).
In the last class, for current conditions we have an area of suitable habitat for the spectacled bear of 86 138.75 km2 and for 2050, in the RCP4.5 and RCP 8.5 these areas increase in 12 0895.15 km2 and 118 253.38 km2 respectively. These areas were also quantified in protected and unprotected zones for each country for their conservation measures. The pilot study of this species helped us to respond to the SDG metric (TARGET 15.5, INDICATOR 15.5.1, Red List Index: Area of suitable habitats for selected vertebrate species) and establish the methodology technical sheet for countries to model other vertebrate species.
