Memorandum for the Petitioners | 83 8.30. In the Philippine setting, there are only three studies on the impacts of climate change on Philippine forests and biodiversity that are available to date; thus, this warrants further studies considering the importance of the topic in the Philippine context. The first one is at the forest biome level (Lasco, Pulhin, Sanchez, Villamor, & Villegas, 2008), the second one is at the tree species level (Garcia, Lasco, Ines, Lyon, & Pulhin, 2013), and the third study investigated bird species (Snelder, van Weerd, van‘t Zelfde, & Tamis, 2013).3°7 8.31. The first study by Lasco et al. (2008) “showed in general that tropical forest areas in the Philippines would expand as temperature and rainfall increase, but not for all forest types. It utilized the Holdridge life zones, an ecological classification system based on the three climatic factors: rainfall, heat (bio-temperature), and humidity (potential evapotranspiration ratio) to classify Philippine forest types.” 8.32. Lasco et al. study also revealed that “without any anthropogenic influence, the potential vegetation at current temperature and rainfall would be dominated by the dry tropical, moist tropical, and wet tropical forest life zones. . . . Increasing temperature and rainfall resulted in a re-distribution of forest zones. The dry forests are the most vulnerable forest types as it will be totally eliminated with at least a 1°C rise in temperature and a 25% rise in rainfall. ... Moist forests are also vulnerable especially under higher rainfall increase. On the positive side, there will be a significant increase in rain forest types as rainfall increases.’ 8.33. The second study by Garcia et al. (2013), on the other hand, “aimed to evaluate the consequences of climate change on geographical distributions and habitat suitability of 14 threatened forest tree species in the Philippines. Based on the principle of maximum entropy, it utilized a machine algorithm called Maxent to estimate a target probability distribution and habitat suitability of the selected species.”? 8.34. Garcia et al. study also demonstrated that “seven species (Afzelia rhomboidea; Koordersiodendron pinnatum; Mangifera altissima; Shorea contorta,; Shorea palosapis,; Shorea polysperma; Vitex parviflora) were found to likely benefit from future rainfall and temperature scenarios due to the potential increase in their suitable habitat, while the other seven species (Agathis philippinensis; Celtis luzonica; Dipterocarpus grandiflorus; Shorea guiso; Shorea negrosensis, Toona calantas; Vatica mangachapoi) will likely experience decline in their suitable habitat.3®! 3°” Philippine Climate Change Assessment (2017), p. 21, available at https://climate.gov.ph/files/PhilCCAWG2.pdf (last accessed on 12 September 2019). 358 Ibid. 359 Ibid. 369 Ibid. 361 Ibid., p. 22.