Abstract
Climate and land-use change are reshaping habitat suitability and landscapes governing structural connectivity, yet most connectivity assessments remain static, assuming fixed ranges and time-invariant resistance. Here we develop a dynamic prioritization framework that integrates climate suitability, land-use change and network prioritization to generate time-explicit corridor priorities for four major taxonomic groups, Amphibia, Aves, Mammalia and Plantae, across mainland China. Comparing static and time-updated corridor strategies under climate-only, human-only and combined resistance settings, we find pervasive turnover in core areas and shifting corridor priorities through time. Single-dimension resistance models consistently increase exposure to the omitted complementary stressor, whereas time-updated corridors reduce long-horizon exposure relative to static assumptions, with climate dynamics contributing more strongly than land-use dynamics. Overall, static and single-dimension connectivity models can underestimate long-term exposure and misidentify persistent priorities. Our framework provides a transferable template for spatiotemporal connectivity prioritization under climate and land-use change.
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Xu, B., Dang, T. & Wu, X. Static connectivity models underestimate ecological risk under long-term climate and land-use change.
Commun Earth Environ (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03707-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03707-5
Source: Ecology - nature.com
