Potential effects of sea level rise on New World insular snakes

• Ano de defesa: 2024
• Autor(a) principal: Ramos, Isabela Monteiro Gil
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Biblioteca Digitais de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Palavras-chave em Português: Climate change; GIS; Habitat loss; Ilhas; Islands; Mudanças climáticas; Perda de habitat; Serpentes; SIG; Snakes
• Link de acesso: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/91/91131/tde-05122024-151955/

Sea level rise (SLR) induced by anthropogenic climate change poses threats to terrestrial ecosystems, including coastal inundation, thereby threatening the habitats of various species. Islands face heightened vulnerability due to limited resources and high levels of endemism. However, current methodologies for assessing SLR impacts on islands often overlook critical factors such as island land cover and spatial inundation distribution. This study addresses the comprehensive exploration of the potential effects of SLR on insular snake populations in the New World, examining both the broad impacts on island habitats and the specific consequences for snake species. Chapter 1 elucidates the vulnerability of insular snakes to climate change and emphasizes the significance of understanding how SLR would affect their ecosystems in terms of habitat loss. In this section, it was quantified the potential habitat loss for snakes across various islands under two SLR scenarios, a baseline and a high-impact, and explored the implications for snake conservation. Results indicate that SLR would lead to substantial area loss for many islands. Geographical location and land cover type emerge as key factors explaining the variability in extent of area loss. Islands that possess lower mean coastal heights and specific land cover types, like mangroves and salt marshes, are shown to be particularly vulnerable to inundation. Furthermore, the study reveals variations in vulnerability among snake species, especially those which extinction risk was still not evaluated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). These Not Evaluated species face significant habitat loss, emphasizing the urgent need to enhance taxonomic and geographic data to better assess and mitigate their possible risk of extinction. Chapter 2 provides and discuss a method to estimate island area loss due to SLR. It consists in an automated approach that can be applied by other researchers to assess the vulnerability of several islands simultaneously. By integrating geographic information system tools and spatial data sources such as vector polygons, Digital Elevation Models, and land cover data, the automated method enhances the precision and efficiency of large-scale inundation assessments. This thesis underscores the profound and multifaceted impacts of SLR on New World insular snakes, highlighting the urgent need for immediate and strategic conservation efforts tailored to the specific vulnerabilities of different island groups and habitats.