Climate change and shifting ecosystems: consequences for maintaining or creating intactness

Climate change will undoubtedly impact key components of landscape intactness ranging from the effective connectivity of ecosystems to overall species abundance and composition.  Shifts in average temperature and precipitation will be major drivers of future landscape states, but coming decades will also feature key alterations to the fundamental "structure" of the climate we experience.  For example, large storms may come in historically-unprecedented seasons, or the magnitude of swings between extremes could increase over time.  Likewise, the way that climate varies over seasonal to multidecadal timescales may be different.  Such changes in climate variability, seasonality, and extremes could be especially important for limiting our ability to meet certain conservation goals and for reducing the effectiveness of many common management tools.  However, as we hope to show, there is also great promise for adapting our efforts to promote or restore intactness to the realities of a fundamentally altered climate.