Climate Futures

Excavating in Blanche Cave south east

Mitigating future biodiversity losses and maintaining resilient ecosystems

Earth is on a path to devastating climate change that will transform biodiversity and disrupt services that ecosystems provide to nature and people. We must plan to do better and prepare to adapt.

Climate warming 

Global mean temperatures have risen by 1.1°C since the beginning of the Industrial Period, nearing conditions that have not been experienced on Earth for the past 1.2 million years. This warming, and associated climatic events, has altered biodiversity in every biome, broadly impacting human and natural systems.

As climate change intensifies in the coming decades, safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystem services must remain high on policy agendas. Understanding, planning and adapting to these climate-driven changes will require multiple lines of evidence, informed by computer models, observed changes in modern times, and historical studies over a range of time scales.

Sediment coring Stradbroke Island

Responding to future climatic change

Climate Futures is a transdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Adelaide who have united to provide the context, tools and policy guidance needed to help mitigate future biodiversity losses and maintain resilient ecosystems in the face of shifting climates.

Our researchers have the expertise needed to identify the trajectory and causes of climate-driven biodiversity responses, and to formulate evidence-based solutions to protect natural and human systems from climatic change. These include, but are not limited to expertise in palaeoecology, historical and contemporary ecology, conservation science, environmental systems and their management, computer modelling, climatic change, and economics and decision making. Our team specialises in identifying problems and delivering integrated, actionable solutions to: 

  • Identify and mitigate serious effects of climatic change on biodiversity, ecosystems and environmental systems.
  • Meet the challenges of extreme events.
  • Ensure food security on the land and in the sea.
  • Future-proof urban environments and protected areas.
  • Develop innovative solutions for transitioning to a low greenhouse gas emissions future. 
Examining a bandicoot

Partnering with Climate Futures

Climate Futures recognises that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are increasing primarily due to burning fossil fuels and land use change, and that if emissions are not stopped rapidly, impacts from climate change on living systems will intensify. By harnessing the power of our world-leading research in environmental management under climate change, our research team can assist in delivering solutions for maintaining vulnerable natural systems, using reliable predictions and evidence-based solutions.

  • How will our team help you?

    Climate Futures has the expertise to provide data and tools that can:

    • Identify past, and future, climatic change and its effects on environments, fauna and flora.
    • Detect, decipher and project extreme events, including heatwaves, droughts, floods and bushfires.
    • Assess the effectiveness of greenhouse gas reduction measures, including nature-based solutions, and their associated impacts on the environment.
    • Determine the species, communities, ecosystems and production systems that are most vulnerable to future climate change.
    • Provide climate-biodiversity solutions that build resilient ecosystems and maintain their services to nature and people.
    • Disentangle climate impacts from other stressors of global change that shape biodiversity, including land-use, exploitation and invasive species.
    • Ensure cities and towns are well-equipped to address looming climate change
    • Protect biodiversity across land tenures in conjunction with improvements in sustainable use and tourism.

What can we offer you?

Climate futures offer research and support for real-world problem solving of day-to-day issues arising as a result of our changing climate futures. Outputs include socially relevant applications aimed at helping communities adapt to future climatic change. Our research can be applied through diverse models of engagement including partnerships and collaboration among institutions or individuals.

Interested?

Download our brochure:

Climate Futures Areas of Expertise

Welsby Lagoon

Download the brochure

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For further information:

Professor Damien Fordham
The University of Adelaide 
North Terrace, Benham Building
SA 5005 Australia
E: damien.fordham@adelaide.edu.au
T: +61 8 8313 6711