Any conservation strategy must deal with the uncertainty caused by anthropogenic climate change. In order to forecast such changes, the climate change velocity approach has been used to measure ecosystem exposure to this phenomenon. The Tropical Andes and the Chilean Winter Rainfall-Valdivian Forests (Central Chile) hotspots are priority for conservation due to their high species richness and threats, where climate change is one of the serious pressures to their ecosystems. Even though previous studies have forecasted future climate velocity patterns across the globe, these biodiversity hotspots lack a regional evaluation of the vulnerability to climate change to inform conservation decisions. In this study, we evaluated the vulnerability of terrestrial ecosystems to climate change velocity at the Southern South America ecoregional system, by using regional climatic data that improves the accuracy of predictions. We estimated forward and backward velocities for temperature and precipitation, and we performed a protected area-level analysis of climate change vulnerability. Also, we compared our results with previous evaluations. We found that forward velocity was higher in the Tropical Andes hotspot for both climatic variables analyzed, whereas backward velocity was higher in the Central Chile hotspot considering just the temperature variable. Finally, we found that in the Central Chile hotspot, smaller protected areas are more vulnerable to climate change as measured by climate change velocity, whereas in the Tropical Andes hotspot, larger protected areas are more vulnerable. Several rapid change areas are expected along the two hotspots. These findings have important conservation implications in the region, especially for the protected areas.

中文翻译：

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南美南部气候变化速度驱动的热点和生态区脆弱性

任何保护策略都必须应对人为气候变化所造成的不确定性。为了预测此类变化，已使用气候变化速度法来衡量生态系统对该现象的暴露程度。热带安第斯山脉和智利冬季降雨-瓦尔迪维亚森林（智利中部）热点由于物种丰富度高和受到威胁而被列为保护重点，而气候变化是其生态系统面临的严重压力之一。尽管先前的研究已经预测了全球未来的气候速度模式，但是这些生物多样性热点地区缺乏对气候变化脆弱性的区域评估，无法为保护决策提供依据。在这项研究中，我们评估了南美南部生态区系统中陆地生态系统对气候变化速度的脆弱性，通过使用区域气候数据来提高预测的准确性。我们估算了温度和降水的前进和后退速度，并对气候变化脆弱性进行了保护区级分析。此外，我们将我们的结果与以前的评估进行了比较。我们发现，对于两个分析的气候变量，热带安第斯山脉热点的前向速度都较高，而仅考虑温度变量，智利中部热点的后向速度较高。最后，我们发现在智利中部热点地区，以气候变化速度来衡量，较小的保护区更容易受到气候变化的影响，而在安第斯山脉的热带地区，较大的保护区更容易受到气候变化的影响。预计在两个热点地区将出现几个快速变化的区域。