Key messages 

• Biodiversity in NSW is highly vulnerable to climate change with ongoing habitat loss and fragmentation reducing the capacity of ecosystems to adapt.
• Taking a strategic approach to biodiversity conservation, informed by robust data and modelling, can help build ecosystem resilience and adaptive capacity.
• The biodiversity impacts and adaptation framework (the Framework) provides insights on climate impacts to biodiversity as well as guidance on where and how to reduce climate-related risk to native ecosystems.
• The Framework integrates climate projections, ecosystem distributions, and habitat condition and connectivity mapping to address three important questions: 
  -   how much of the State’s biodiversity can persist under different climate and land use scenarios?
  -   which ecosystems are at the greatest risk from ongoing clearing and climate change, and should be prioritised for conservation efforts? 
  -   where in the landscape those conservation efforts will yield the best biodiversity outcomes under our future climate?
• The Framework maps risks and adaptation opportunities under climate change to help conservation efforts achieve meaningful biodiversity outcomes. It is flexible, dynamic, and capable of guiding real-world whole-of-landscape conservation planning across all landscapes, ecosystems and tenures in NSW.

Context

An NSW Government initiative, the Biodiversity Impacts and Adaptation Framework uses spatial data and process modelling to represent key drivers of biodiversity in real-world landscapes under plausible climate scenarios. The Framework examines 3 interconnected concepts that describe biodiversity:

• Composition – Using thousands of species records to understand diversity within and between places and ecosystems, and how biodiversity changes across the landscape and over time.²
• Structure – Incorporating remotely sensed data and available information to assess and predict changes in the current state of remaining habitats.³
• Function – Evaluating the landscape's capacity to support species and ecosystems⁴ as they adapt to climate change.

The Framework assesses the collective impacts that habitat loss and fragmentation, possible management actions, and an uncertain future climate have on these aspects of biodiversity. It provides people working towards biodiversity conservation with useful maps and guiding information on how best to reduce these impacts and where conservation efforts will provide the best biodiversity outcomes for the State. 

Key findings

Biodiversity across NSW is projected to decline as a direct result of locked-in climate change. Losses over the next 50 years could be at a comparable rate to those resulting from habitat clearing since European settlement. Conservation efforts, including habitat restoration, will be needed to limit ongoing declines.

Contributing to biodiversity decline will be considerable climate-driven shifts in species and ecosystem distributions impeded by highly modified landscapes. 

Our findings presented in Bridging the gap between climate science and regional-scale biodiversity conservation in south-eastern Australia article⁵ and the Biodiversity Impacts and Adaptation Project report⁶ show:

• Around 8% of ecosystem diversity could be lost by 2070 just from shifting species and ecosystem distributions alone. Impacts are likely to be much greater when all influencing stressors and shocks are considered.
• Shifts in species and ecosystem distributions vary significantly across different climate scenarios. Despite differences, models generally agree on where conservation efforts will provide the best biodiversity outcomes⁷ inserting some degree of confidence into the challenge of planning for a highly uncertain future.
• Places found to play important roles in supporting adaptation across climate scenarios often intersect with existing protected areas along the Great Eastern Ranges. Despite considerable changes in species composition, these areas retain a critical role of absorbing and facilitating change while minimising loss.
• Most parts of NSW are projected to become 30-60% less suitable for their present ecosystems by 2070, requiring many species to migrate to adapt. The greatest changes occur across highly modified landscapes of the sheep/wheat belt in areas with the least capacity to support climate migrations.
• Allowing species and ecosystems to shift across landscapes will be vital to maintaining their adaptive capacity. This will require a whole-of-landscape approach to biodiversity conservation, crossing regions, tenures, land uses and jurisdictions.

Adaptation and application strategies 

This work is relevant across all sectors of government and the community interested in protecting species and ecosystems threatened by climate change. It creates new understandings and facilitates well-targeted conservation action. 

More specifically this work:

• reveals insights into climate change impacts on biodiversity

• helps conservation planners and decision-makers access knowledge of future climate

• highlights where passive adaptation can proceed and where management intervention will be needed.

The Framework does this by delivering a pipeline of decision-ready climate-informed metrics, scenarios and spatial data. These are being made easily accessible to end-users through SEED, Adapt NSW and the Adaptation Hub as they become available. 

New spatial products and tools currently being developed using NARCliM2.0 climate projections include:

• distribution models of species and ecosystems
• assessments of expected changes in the distribution and composition of biodiversity
• biodiversity evaluations measuring the impacts of climate scenarios
• biodiversity benefits mapping which provides direct input to Natural Resource Management (NRM) and strategic planning
• visualisation tools designed to promote engagement and learning throughout the community.

Resources

State Government of NSW and NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, Future Compositional Dissimilarity Grids (dataset)

Harwood, T., Love, J., Drielsma, M. et al. Staying connected: assessing the capacity of landscapes to retain biodiversity in a changing climate. Landscape Ecology, 2022, 37, 3123–3139. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-022-01534-5

State Government of NSW and NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, Biodiversity Impacts and Adaptation Project Report, 2022

References

1. Michael J. Drielsma, Jamie Love, Kristen J. Williams, Glenn Manion, Hanieh Saremi, Tom Harwood, Janeen Robb, Bridging the gap between climate science and regional-scale biodiversity conservation in south-eastern Australia, Ecological Modelling, 2017, Volume 360, Pages 343-362, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2017.06.022.
2. State Government of NSW and NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, Bioclimatic Class Grids (dataset), 2022
3. State Government of NSW and NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, NSW Habitat Intactness (HI) Index (dataset), 2025
4. State Government of NSW and NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, NSW Neighbourhood Habitat Intactness (NHI) Index (dataset), 2025
5. Michael J. Drielsma, Jamie Love, Kristen J. Williams, Glenn Manion, Hanieh Saremi, Tom Harwood, Janeen Robb, Bridging the gap between climate science and regional-scale biodiversity conservation in south-eastern Australia, Ecological Modelling, 2017, Volume 360, Pages 343-362, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2017.06.022.
6. State Government of NSW and NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, Biodiversity Impacts and Adaptation Project (stage II) report, 2016
7. State Government of NSW and NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, Combined 2000-2070 climate adaptation (dataset), 2025.