Assessing species vulnerability to climate and land use change: the case of the Swiss breeding birds

Climate warming and land use change represent a major challenge for both species and conservation managers. Temporally and spatially explicit projections of the future distribution of species have been extensively developed to support decision-making in conservation. The aim of this study was to move beyond the simple projections of likely impacts of global change to identify the most vulnerable species. We suggest an original vulnerability index that integrates estimations of projected range change and different proxies of species resilience in a quantitative way. The proposed index is generally applicable, completely quantitative, and it allows ranking species so as to prioritize conservation actions