ACT Climate refugia are core areas of the landscape most likely to support persistence of dominant trees, shrubs and grasses of the Capital Region under climate change.

The data identify refugia expected to support climate sensitive species characteristic of each vegetation community, both now and into the future, based on distribution modelling using NARCLiM climate projections (MacKenzie et al 2019).

The areas shown (refugia) highlight where the most stressed subset of dominant plant species today (i.e., common trees, shrubs and grasses modelled to lose >= 75% of their current distribution) are more likely to persist under a wide range of future climate scenarios. These refugia can be used to prioritise management actions to minimise further stresses to those communities (e.g. prescribed burning within tolerable fire intervals; climate-adaptive revegetation programs, etc). Note: Areas smaller than 0.5 hectares have been removed to enable quicker map drawing, contact officeofnatureconservation@act.gov.au for the full dataset, including ensemble forecasts for individual plant species (n=151).

Source Technical Report:

MacKenzie, J.B., G. Baines, L. Johnston & J. Seddon. 2019. Identifying biodiversity refugia under climate change in the ACT and region. Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate, ACT Government, Canberra. https://www.environment.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/1404808/identifying-biodiversity-refugia-in-the-act.pdf

Mapped originally in GDA1994_MGA_Zone55, transformed to GDA2020_MGA_Zone55

For use as a broad scale product, for example at 1:50,000 scale only. Please read the technical report for data caveats and limitations.