Usually remnants of an original ecosytem surviving in isolated or discrete areas. They are areas which have not undergone ecological change in environments that have undergone considerable change. They provide suitable habitat for species which may have once been distributed across an entire local environment or bioregion. It is a place that effectively protects species from the effects of severe environmental disruptions that, in the rest of their habitat range, lead to significant declines in biomass, mass death, or mass extinction.
(singular: Refugium) Areas that were unglaciated during the ice age, and thus served as refuges in which organisms could survive.
An area with relatively unaltered climate that is inhabitated by plants and animals during periods of large-scale climatic change (for example, glaciation) and that remains a center of relict forms from which the species disperse and speciation occurs once the climate reverts.
Refugium: A sanctuary for--in this case--insects that allows them to live, regardless of external conditions, and from which a new dispersion can take place.
Areas that have not been exposed to great environmental changes and disturbances undergone by the region as a whole. In this FEIS, refugia include inventoried roadless areas that are relatively free from human-caused disruptions and disturbances when compared to roaded areas; refugia provide conditions suitable for survival of species that may be declining elsewhere.
A refugium is a biological community or geographic entity, which, because of its moderating structural characteristics and/or physical isolation, provides a sanctuary to which species or groups of species have retreated or been confined in response to threatening processes, including climatic change.
During times of climatic upheaval or biological stress, areas exist on the globe where species can take refuge. These places are considered refugia by scientists. Places of past refugium are sometimes areas that still shelter an ecology of high biological diversity.
In the most basic biological sense refugia (singular: refugium) refer to locations of isolated or relict populations of once widespread animal or plant species. This isolation (allopatry) can be the result of human activities - such as deforestation, over hunting, etc. - or climatic changes. Present examples of such refuge species may be the mountain gorilla, now isolated to specific mountains in central Africa, and the Australian Sea Lion, presently isolated to specific breeding beaches in south Australia due to over hunting.
