Prioritizing conservation efforts based on future habitat availability and accessibility under climate change.

The potential for species to shift their ranges to avoid extinction is contingent on both the future availability and accessibility of habitats with analogous climates. However, many previous studies used a single method that considered individual factors, while a few combined two factors to develop conservation strategies. Most studies that do so focus on identifying climate refugia or climate connectivity areas in fixed areas, ignoring the dynamic range shifting process of animals. Here, we combined habitat suitability and climate velocity with network analysis to quantify future habitat availability and accessibility under climate change, thereby assessing range shift potential and identifying conservation priority areas for migratory birds across the Yangtze River basin (YRB) in the 2050s under 4 climatic scenarios. Our results suggested that medium (i.e., 5-10 km/yr) and high (i.e., above 10 km/yr) climate velocity would threaten 18.65% and 8.37% of stable suitability areas. Despite low (i.e., 0-5 km/yr) climate velocity exposure, 50.15% of climate velocity-identified destinations had poorer habitat suitability than their sources. Integrating climate velocity and habitat suitability, a few but critica sites and paths were identified as priority protected areas, mainly in Sichuan and the mid-lower reaches of the YRB. Finally, we constructed a climate-informed protected priority areas network for migratory birds. Overall, we demonstrate the differences between habitat suitability and climate velocity in capturing biological responses to climate change. More importantly, we accounted for the dynamic process of species range shifts implied by climate velocity and future habitat suitability, which we then used to identify conservation priority areas. Therefore, this study can provide a novel insight into forecasting climate-driven distribution shifts and informing conservation priorities. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.