At the time of this writing (early spring 2020), the COVID‐19 wave is hitting the US. We are all hoping that the wave, here and elsewhere, can be kept sufficiently low and slow so that medical infrastructure and personnel can keep pace with the outbreak. That will also provide time for the research and clinical‐practice communities to better understand the disease and how to manage it.

A wave of a different sort is also hitting the world as I write: a wave of climate‐driven ecological change. Across the globe, ecosystems are under stress from sea‐level rise, increasing temperatures, and novel precipitation patterns, and many are being disrupted by extreme wildfires, storms, droughts, and heat waves. Ecological changes, ranging from local extirpations and species replacement to regional‐scale ecosystem transformation, are coming faster than anticipated, posing challenges for scientists and societies. What's at stake is made clear by recent scientific assessments – the Global Assessment of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, the US Fourth National Climate Assessment, the periodic reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and numerous regional and local reports.

As in the case of the COVID‐19 pandemic, our best hope is to render the climate‐change wave low and slow, reducing impacts and buying time to study, prepare, understand, and adapt. But we must also mobilize and deploy available resources to address the climate impacts already underway. Slowdown, cessation, or reversal of global warming may be decades away; in the meantime, greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere guarantee continuing climate change for the foreseeable future. The past decade has seen the development of numerous climate‐adaptation remedies and solutions for biodiversity and ecosystem services, and these tools will need to be applied, tested, refined, and augmented in the coming decade.

The papers in this Special Issue focus on one of these deployment‐ready tools: conservation using climate‐change refugia. The authors include scientists and resource managers who've been partnering to apply refugium management to a wide variety of situations. Despite their diversity, these papers apply a common logic: sites across a landscape or waterscape will differ in the rate, magnitude, and nature of climate‐change effects. Refugial applications concentrate on environmentally conservative sites, where climate‐change effects are slowed, dampened, or otherwise offset, allowing local or regional persistence of populations, communities, or ecosystems, even as others in the surrounding area are changing.

These applications represent a pivot from the academic roots of the refugium concept in ecology and biogeography, which centered on identifying historical locales where now‐widespread species populations persisted during adverse periods (notably, ice ages). Applications of climate‐change refugia focus on ensuring persistence under the adverse conditions of the future. Under continuing climate change, refugia won't be static; individual refugia may serve a population or community for only a few years or decades. But they'll buy time for longer‐term adaptation, whether natural (eg dispersal, natural selection), managed (eg relocation, genetic manipulation), or both. Refugia may play a particularly important role in the event of climate overshoot, whereby global temperatures would temporarily exceed mitigation‐target levels before subsequent cooling and stabilization. And, although a refugium site may ultimately fail the populations or features it was originally intended for, it can continue to serve other species or communities by buffering temperature, disturbance, drought, or other stresses. Refugial conservation biology is ripe for dynamic landscape‐scale application that leverages natural and anthropogenic landscape heterogeneity to facilitate migration and other adaptive processes under continuing climate change.

The papers in this Special Issue share another feature beyond the refugial framework: the authors all adopt translational‐science approaches. Research ecologists involved in climate‐change refugia have worked closely with resource managers in developing and applying the concept, and many of the authors are from the management sector. This deep engagement between scientists and managers is critical for successful climate‐change adaptation.

Translational ecology was inspired by translational medicine, a movement that aspires to link clinical and laboratory researchers directly with the front lines of medical practice and public health. The urgent demand for effective translational medicine is obvious in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic. The need for effective translational ecology is no less urgent. Although COVID‐19 will have lasting and perhaps devastating effects on our lives, societies, and economies, the disease wave itself should pass through over the course of a year or two. In contrast, the climate wave will carry on far longer, with persistent and continuing ecological and societal disruptions. Pressing actions are needed to minimize or offset the damage to biodiversity and ecosystem services, and most critically to flatten the oncoming wave.

在撰写本文时（2020年初春季），COVID-19浪潮席卷美国。我们都希望能够将浪潮在这里和其他地方保持足够低和慢，以使医疗基础设施和人员能够跟上疫情的步伐。这也将为研究和临床实践界提供时间来更好地了解该疾病及其治疗方法。

在我撰写本文时，另一种浪潮也席卷全球：浪潮是由气候驱动的生态变化。在全球范围内，生态系统正受到海平面上升，温度升高和新颖的降水模式的压力，许多生态系统正受到极端野火，暴风雨，干旱和热浪的干扰。从地方灭绝和物种替代到区域规模的生态系统转变，生态变化的发生速度比预期的快，这给科学家和社会带来了挑战。最近的科学评估清楚地说明了所要解决的问题：政府间生物多样性和生态系统服务平台的全球评估，美国第四次国家气候评估，政府间气候变化专门委员会的定期报告以及众多地区和地方报告。

与COVID-19大流行一样，我们最大的希望是使气候变化浪潮缓慢而缓慢，减少影响并减少学习，准备，理解和适应的时间。但是，我们还必须动员和部署可用资源，以解决已经发生的气候影响。全球变暖的放缓，停止或逆转可能需要数十年的时间。同时，大气中已经存在的温室气体保证了在可预见的将来持续的气候变化。在过去的十年中，已经为生物多样性和生态系统服务开发了许多适应气候变化的补救措施和解决方案，并且在未来十年中将需要应用，测试，完善和增强这些工具。

本期特刊的论文重点介绍了以下一种可部署的工具：使用气候变化避难所进行保护。作者包括科学家和资源管理人员，他们已经合作将避难所管理应用于各种情况。尽管它们的多样性，但它们采用了共同的逻辑：景观或水景中的站点在气候变化影响的速率，幅度和性质上将有所不同。避难应用集中在环境保守的地点，在这些地点气候变化的影响被减慢，减弱或以其他方式抵消，从而允许人口，社区或生态系统在本地或区域的持久性，即使周围其他地区正在变化。

这些应用代表了生态学和生物地理学中避难所概念的学术渊源的枢纽，避难所概念的研究根源在于确定历史区域，在这些区域中，现在广泛分布的物种种群在不利时期（尤其是冰河时期）持续存在。气候变化避难所的应用侧重于确保在未来的不利条件下持续存在。在持续的气候变化下，避难并非一成不变。个别的庇护所可能只为人口或社区服务几年或几十年。但是他们会花时间进行长期的适应，无论是自然的（例如分散，自然选择），管理的（例如搬迁，遗传操作），还是两者兼而有之。在气候超调的情况下，避难所可能扮演特别重要的角色，因此，在随后的冷却和稳定之前，全球温度将暂时超过减排目标水平。而且，尽管避难所可能最终使原定的种群或功能丧失，但可以通过缓冲温度，干扰，干旱或其他压力继续为其他物种或社区服务。在自然景观规模化应用中，利用自然和人为景观异质性来促进庇护保护生物学已经成熟，可以在持续的气候变化下促进迁移和其他适应性过程。

本期特刊中的论文具有超越拒绝框架的另一个特征：所有作者均采用翻译科学方法。参与气候变化避难所的研究生态学家与资源管理者在开发和应用该概念方面进行了密切合作，许多作者来自管理部门。科学家和管理人员之间的这种深入互动对于成功地适应气候变化至关重要。

转化医学的灵感来自转化医学，该运动旨在将临床和实验室研究人员与医学实践和公共卫生的前沿直接联系起来。在COVID-19大流行的背景下，对有效的转化医学的迫切需求显而易见。同样，迫切需要有效的翻译生态学。尽管COVID-19将对我们的生活，社会和经济产生持久甚至毁灭性的影响，但疾病浪潮本身应该在一两年内传播。相反，气候浪潮将持续更长的时间，并将持续不断地破坏生态和社会。需要采取紧迫行动，以尽量减少或抵消对生物多样性和生态系统服务的损害，最关键的是平息即将来临的浪潮。