Add This to Your Vocabulary - 'Refugia'

Around the world, southern hemisphere and northern, there is a mass migration underway.

Species, terrestrial and marine; insect, reptile, mammal, bird, even plants are shifting ever poleward away from the overheating equatorial and tropical zones.

During the Ice Age species that survived migrated toward the equatorial/tropical latitudes. This time migration is in the opposite direction and the rate of change is comparatively abrupt.

By and large the pace of migration is moderated by the speed at which each creature's food chain moves. There are exceptions but the need to feed is a major factor.

Another factor is a specie's ability to acclimate to cooler, even colder habitation. It can take years to acclimate to a new climate. It has been estimated that, in previous extinctions, one degree Celsius per millennia was the threshold.

Today, however, man-made climate change could trigger warming rates of four, even five degrees Celsius in just one century. Many species simply cannot evolve that fast. They're in a race to find refugia.

"We're literally living through a redistribution of life on Earth," said Gretta Pecl, a marine ecologist at the University of Tasmania and lead author on a recent study of range shift in the journal Science. "Even though this is my bread and butter that I work on, it really does blow my mind ... the extent of this phenomena." 

Pecl said the way this is playing out, in broad strokes, is that in the Northern Hemisphere, plants and animals are moving north, while in the Southern Hemisphere, they're moving south.

Seeking cooler homes, plants and animals are also "going to higher elevations on mountains and deeper in the ocean, and it really is a pervasive movement of the geography of life."

Ultimately, these species are seeking what scientists call climate change "refugia" — areas where they can survive at a time of environmental instability.

Diana Stralberg, a research associate at the University of Alberta, said the concept of refugia has been around for a while as a way to examine where species escaped during major changes in climate in the past, such as ice ages. 

Stralberg said that in the current era, many scientists think of climate change refugia "as a slow lane for species in a rapidly changing world." 

The "slow lane" refers to "areas that are changing more slowly with respect to the surrounding landscape," said Stralberg. "These are areas where species and ecosystems can bide time while they adapt to change — or we can figure out how to slow down the process of climate change." 

In their research, Stralberg and her colleagues have identified certain slow lanes for climate change in Canada, including mountain ranges.

Does humanity, the species that has been singularly instrumental in the migratory flight, have some responsibility to create and preserve refugia pathways? Can we afford not to? Remember, the more of these species that become effectively extinct, the harder it will be for us to survive. That's why Noah built such a bloody enormous ark.

These micro-climates stay cooler, becoming a safe haven for animals pushed out of their ranges due to warming temperatures. Stralberg said that in seeking sanctuary, species in these areas could, for example, move higher up mountains or along river corridors, areas that they "can more readily shift to."

By mapping out these slow lanes, Stralberg and her colleagues want to show the parts of Canada that have the most value in preserving biodiversity, in the hopes they can "protect those areas in parks or conservation areas, or work with industry to manage them."

Around the world we're spending trillions to help our people get through Covid-19 with some semblance of social order intact. How much are we willing to invest on the survival of nature?