Enhancing protected areas for climate refugia in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Protected areas (PAs) are the critical societal tool to conserve biodiversity, while rapid climate change potentially threatens the ecological outcomes of PAs. Therefore, targeting conservation and adaptation efforts necessitate a well-understand of the relationship between PAs and climate refugia. it is defined as buffer regions for species against exposure to climate change. Previous studies to identify climate refugia mainly relied on terrain-based metrics or climatic velocity, which ignore the ecosystem’s internal processes. To promote more biologically meaningful climate adaptation solutions, efforts need to be made to incorporate internal and external ecological processes to improve climate refugia identification. This work identified climate refugia in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP), based on environmental diversity, phenology stability, and climatic velocity. It highlights the capacity to cope with extreme weather events, synchronization with plant growth cycles, and future climate adaptation, respectively. The results show that the climate refugia identified by environmental diversity, climatic velocity, and phenology stability indicators differed substantially, indicating the possible absence of functional complementarity of climate adaptation. Furthermore, existing PAs have notable conservation gaps for these refugia identified, particularly in the southeastern part of QTP. It highlighted the urgency of strengthening PAs for climate refugia in the QTP. Our work provides a comprehensive understanding of climate refugia, which can support better climate-driven conservation policies in the face of global warming.