Land Cover Constrains Range Shifts in Northern Iberian Bird Species Under Climate Change Scenarios

Climate and land cover changes are considered some of the most important drivers of the current biodiversity crisis. The assessment of their combined impacts is starting to attract greater attention. In this study, we assess the role of land cover changes in constraining species range shifts under climate change scenarios in the Iberian Peninsula. We assessed the relative contribution of climate and land cover to the current distribution of 32 northern Iberian bird species using ecological niche models and deviance partitioning. We also assessed how different scenarios of climate change may affect species distributions, with or without changes in land cover. In addition to the independent effect of climate, the current distribution of northern Iberian birds was also shaped by the joint effects that can be indistinguishably attributed to climate or land cover (42% of the explained variations). When changes in climate and land cover were decoupled by allowing only one of them to change concerning current conditions, there was evidence of an effect of land cover in climate-driven predictions: predicted range size shifts were significantly lower when changes in climate were not accompanied by changes in land cover. This highlights the importance of incorporating land cover management alongside climate adaptation strategies in conservation planning.