A literature review of assessments of species’ vulnerability to climate change

In a paper published in January in Conservation Science and Practice, Erin R. Crone, a Ph.D. student in biological sciences, conducted a literature review of 47 studies between 2008 and 2022 that assessed climate change vulnerability in vertebrates.

Climate change vulnerability assessments of species are used for governmental policy and funding allocations for conservation, management, and restoration efforts. 

“I think a lot of people don’t really realize how much species are being affected by climate change today,” said Crone, a member of Associate Professor of Biological Sciences Meryl Mims’ lab who conducted the review. “Climate change is happening faster than we have the ability to gain new information about species.” 

In one of the most widely used definitions established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a species’ vulnerability is composed of three elements: exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity.

• Exposure is defined as the rate and magnitude of environmental change experienced.

• Sensitivity is the current environmental and biological specificity and ranges of tolerance. 

• Adaptive capacity is the species’ ability to adjust to, cope with, or respond to climate or environmental changes.

The purpose of the study was to explore the scope, methods, and rationale of vulnerability assessments that use only two elements of the IPCC’s recommended three.

The team found that limitations in data availability and computational resources were common reasons for using only two elements in their assessments. In addition, Crone believes that the rapidity of climate-related environmental changes creates an urgency to assessing species’ vulnerability, which indicates that time is also a critical factor.

“It’s more important to get some sort of estimate of species vulnerability rather than waiting until you have the best information possible,” Crone said. 

Crone suggests that using a two-element approach may allow researchers to assess species relatively rapidly to speed up conservation decision-making or assess many species within a single study.  

For some species, collecting data is often time intensive, particularly when some are simply hard to find. Salamanders, for example, spend a lot of time underground and are not often seen. This makes them challenging to study because range estimates for understanding exposure can be hard for collecting vulnerability data. 

Another challenge to vulnerability assessments are computationally intensive assessments, which may provide more precise predictions but take more time to implement. And Crone suggests that such time-intensive factors may not always be necessary when the other two factors indicate a vulnerability.

Being able to assess species’ vulnerability using the three-element approach is ideal, but Crone suggests that in some instances the two-element approach can be justified.

“I think all three pieces are important, but I think that if a piece of information is missing, that shouldn’t be a reason to throw the whole thing out and just wait until you get that information,” Crone said. “We just don’t have the time.”

This research was funded by a grant from the National Climate Adaptation Science Center of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Other literature review participants include the following: 

• Amanda Hyman – Past postdoctoral fellow in biological sciences, currently with Quantis USA
• Abigail Benson – Virginia Tech Ph.D. (2024 graduate in biological sciences) currently with U.S. Geological Survey, Science Analytics and Synthesis
• Jason Dunham – U.S. Geological Survey, Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center
• Abigail Lynch – U.S. Geological Survey, National Climate Adaptation Science Center
• Laura Thompson – U.S. Geological Survey, National Climate Adaptation Science Center
• Meryl Mims – Associate professor of biological sciences