Much of the world’s biodiversity faces an uncertain future as global warming continues across the Earth’s surface.
The scale and pace of the threat posed by a warming climate has alarmed many scientists, leading them to search for areas that may be least affected by having unusual or stable climates. Scientists reason that such areas could provide somewhere for species to expand and contract their populations over long periods or offer shelter from more extreme conditions. They have been termed ‘microrefugia’ but are also known as ‘cryptic refugia’ because of the difficulty in observing them within a landscape.
Before we can identify refugia, we first need to define them in an ecologically meaningful way. Scientists have known for years that refugia exist as patches in variable (heterogeneous) landscapes, but until recently our definitions of microrefugia have lacked precision or were poorly characterised. To address these shortcomings, we have been conducting detailed and intensive field studies over the last three years monitoring the microclimate at a range of sites in the greater Hunter region west of Newcastle.
Read the full article in the Australian Museum website (opens an external site).