Ongoing climate change is already affecting distributions of many species. Future impacts of climate change are expected to be even greater. Conservation planning methodologies are usually based on the assumption that species distributions change relatively slowly unless they are directly affected by human activities, but this assumption is inappropriate under climate change. To address this problem we develop a model that, assuming a fixed budget limiting the selection of areas devoted to conservation, selects areas for each of different periods of time, and indicates how species disperse between selected areas on successive periods. These areas are termed dispersal pathways. Their effectiveness is assessed based on the performance to retain species suitable climates over time, and on the ability of species to disperse between the areas. The model identifies maximum effective dispersal pathways, limited to some given budget. We applied the model to nine Iberian species and considered four climate change and budgetary scenarios. Climate change scenarios assuming reductions of greenhouse gas emissions had relatively modest gains in species retention areas. But larger budgets for area selection translate in significantly better retention levels. Nevertheless, our model identified species that, regardless the high conservation investment attained with unlimited budget, have a very limited ability to disperse to climatically suitable areas. Connectivity enhancement and assisted colonization could be considered for such cases.

Mediterranean evergreen oak woodlands are scattered trees ecosystems threatened by global warming scenarios and experiencing processes of loss and fragmentation. In representative areas of oak evergreen woodlands, over a 50-year period (1958 ­ 2007), quantitative information on the woodland’s shifting mosaic, comprising its three main patch-types: forest, farmland and shrubland, was obtained. This information included rates of: woodlands loss; core area loss and; edge high-contrast length expansion. Evergreen oak woodlands loss rates sharply increased in recent decades under current management systems. In some areas these ecosystems would be lost in approximately 90-180 years. However it was not clear if the loss of these ecosystems was sensitive to climate change, namely to extreme weather events like precipitation with enlarged below-mean values periods, as particular combinations of socio-economic factors and biophysical conditions seems to affect its dynamics, mainly impacting tree long-term persistence by natural regeneration failure and by shrubland encroachment. Also, the existing environmental financial support programmes for these landscapes, which focus on increasing recruitment, may not reverse this trend.
Perpetuating these ecosystems requires a strategy that keeps both, low tree mortality and tree recruitment, encompassing: i) the identification and protection of areas with natural regeneration; ii) the exploitation of soil conservation techniques for oak woodland recovery; and iii) considering the effects of different fragmentation patterns on the ecosystem functioning. Further work is been carried out, with a more precise approach, to have a more clear relationship between oak woodland patterns of loss and fragmentation and global warming extreme weather events.

Global temperatures are increasing at an unprecedented rate, promoting important shifts on plant communities and contributing to the global loss of biodiversity. Of the biological responses to global warming, changes in the timing of phenological events such as flowering are among the most sensitive and important, both from a biological and economical point of view. The most reliable data sources to monitor life-cycle events are datasets systematically compiled by phenological stations. Although these are relatively abundant in Central and Northern Europe, they are scarce in Portugal. The lack of phenological observations can, however, be filled up by biological collections in herbariums and museums. These specimens are potential sources of long-term data to detect changes in flowering phenology, as long as some correction procedure is applied to overcome differences in sampling locations. In this study, we examined herbarium specimens of Narcissus bulbocodium L., an early flowering species with a short flowering period, collected between 1882 and 2006 and, more or less, equally distributed by the whole of the Portuguese territory. The main objective of this work is to find a model that can be used to correct for the geographical differences among the collection sites, allowing for the use of the abundant specimens held in the Portuguese herbaria for the study of the effect of the rise of temperature on plant phenology.

Climate change has the potential to greatly impact nearly every form of agriculture. However, history has shown that the narrow climatic zones for growing winegrapes are especially prone to variations in climate and long-term climate change. The observed warming over the last fifty years in wine regions worldwide has benefited some by creating more suitable conditions while others have been challenged by increased heat and water stress. Projections of future warming at the global, continent, and wine region scales will likely continue to have both beneficial and detrimental impacts through opening new areas to viticulture and increasing viability, or severely challenging the ability to adequately grow grapes and produce quality wine. This paper will detail the observed and projected changes in wine regions worldwide and discuss the impacts on vine growth, fruit composition, yield, and wine quality. Furthermore, this paper will discuss the opportunities and challenges inherent in regional assessments of climate change with particular attention on the Douro Valley of Portugal.

A range of analytical and methodological approaches are used to assess the potential impacts of and vulnerability to climate change. Conventional approaches tend to utilize top-down scenario-based analysis to assess the impacts of a particular stressor or its effects on a particular sector. Alternative methodologies such as bottom-up approaches focus on the underlying processes and factors affecting people’s vulnerability to climate. Both approaches are perceived as complimentary and instrumental to our understanding of climate change vulnerability particularly regarding assessments to inform and develop local adaptation policy. However, the application of methods and tools deriving from such approaches is often limited by the lack of suitable and accessible data. Focusing on the farming sector, this paper will reflect on the challenges encountered in performing an integrated vulnerability assessment framework that brings together these two different approaches and considers some of the key conceptual and methodological problems posed by this type of holistic approach to climate change vulnerability assessments. It concludes by suggesting that there is a need for more explicit debate about the nature and quality of the data required to perform climate change vulnerability assessments.