Towards an integrated framework for assessing the vulnerability of species to climate change

We believe that progress in vulnerability assessment relating to climate change could be hastened if a unified framework was available to coordinate the activities of disparate research disciplines. Specifically, what is needed is a complete working framework for assessing the vulnerability of species that explicitly links: the various components of biotic vulnerability; the regional and local factors determining exposure to climatic change; the potential for both evolutionary and ecological responses, resilience, and active management to mediate the final realised impacts; and the potential for feedback effects. Such a framework would be invaluable as it would integrate and guide thought, research programmes, and policy in the biodiversity/climate change arena and allow significant gaps in knowledge to be clearly identified. To this end, we present a conceptual framework that addresses these challenges.