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Selected articles
- Williams, John W., Stephen T. Jackson, and John E. Kutzbach. 2007. Projected distributions of novel and disappearing climates by 2100 AD. PNAS 104, no. 14: 5738-5742.
- Abstract: Key risks associated with projected climate trends for the 21st century include the prospects of future climate states with no current analog and the disappearance of some extant climates. Because climate is a primary control on species distributions and ecosystem processes, novel 21st-century climates may promote formation of novel species associations and other ecological surprises, whereas the disappearance of some extant climates increases risk of extinction for species with narrow geographic or climatic distributions and disruption of existing communities. Here we analyze multimodel ensembles for the A2 and B1 emission scenarios produced for the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with the goal of identifying regions projected to experience (i) high magnitudes of local climate change, (ii) development of novel 21st-century climates, and/or (iii) the disappearance of extant climates. Novel climates are projected to develop primarily in the tropics and subtropics, whereas disappearing climates are concentrated in tropical montane regions and the poleward portions of continents. Under the high-end A2 scenario, 12-39% and 10-48% of the Earth's terrestrial surface may respectively experience novel and disappearing climates by 2100 AD. Corresponding projections for the low-end B1 scenario are 4-20% and 4-20%. Dispersal limitations increase the risk that species will experience the loss of extant climates or the occurrence of novel climates. There is a close correspondence between regions with globally disappearing climates and previously identified biodiversity hotspots; for these regions, standard conservation solutions (e.g., assisted migration and networked reserves) may be insufficient to preserve biodiversity.
- Portner,
Hans O. and Rainer Knust. 2007. Climate Change Affects Marine Fishes
Through the Oxygen Limitation of Thermal Tolerance. Science 315, no.
5808: 95-97.
- A cause-and-effect understanding of climate influences on ecosystems
requires evaluation of thermal limits of member species and of their
ability to cope with changing temperatures. Laboratory data available
for marine fish and invertebrates from various climatic regions
led to the hypothesis that, as a unifying principle, a mismatch
between the demand for oxygen and the capacity of oxygen supply
to tissues is the first mechanism to restrict whole-animal tolerance
to thermal extremes. We show in the eelpout, Zoarces viviparus,
a bioindicator fish species for environmental monitoring from North
and Baltic Seas (Helcom), that thermally limited oxygen delivery
closely matches environmental temperatures beyond which growth performance
and abundance decrease. Decrements in aerobic performance in warming
seas will thus be the first process to cause extinction or relocation
to cooler waters.
- Parmesan,
Camille. 2006. Ecological and evolutionary responses to recent climate
change. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics
37: 637-669.
- Abstract: Ecological changes in the phenology and distribution
of plants and animals are occurring in all well-studied marine,
freshwater, and terrestrial groups. These observed changes are heavily
biased in the directions predicted from global warming and have
been linked to local or regional climate change through correlations
between climate and biological variation, field and laboratory experiments,
and physiological research. Range-restricted species, particularly
polar and mountaintop species, show severe range contractions and
have been the first groups in which entire species have gone extinct
due to recent climate change. Tropical coral reefs and amphibians
have been most negatively affected. Predator-prey and plant-insect
interactions have been disrupted when interacting species have responded
differently to warming. Evolutionary adaptations to warmer conditions
have occurred in the interiors of species' ranges, and resource
use and dispersal have evolved rapidly at expanding range margins.
Observed genetic shifts modulate local effects of climate change,
but there is little evidence that they will mitigate negative effects
at the species level.
- Root,
Terry L. and Stephen H. Schneider. 2006. Conservation and climate change:
the challenges ahead. Conservation Biology 20, no. 3: 706-708.
- Introduction: Climatic changes in the distant past were driven
by natural causes, such as variations in the Earth’s orbit
or the carbon dioxide (CO2) content of the atmosphere. Today, and
even more so in the future, climatic changes have another driver
as well: human activities (IPCC 1996). The natural greenhouse effect
from clouds, water vapor, and CO2, primarily, is responsible for
some 33◦ C of surface warming. Human use of the atmosphere
to dump gaseous wastes adds to the natural greenhouse gases and
is typically projected to result in a global warming of about 1.5-6
C in the next century (IPCC 2001a). This range—especially if
beyond 1–2 C—could result in ecologically significant
changes (Thomas et al., 2004), which is why climatic considerations
are fundamental in the discussion of conservation strategies for
the twenty-first century....
- Pounds,
et al. 2006. Widespread amphibian extinctions from epidemic
disease driven by global warming. Nature 439, no. 7073: 161-167.
- Abstract: As the Earth warms, many species are likely to disappear,
often because of changing disease dynamics. Here we show that a
recent mass extinction associated with pathogen outbreaks is tied
to global warming. Seventeen years ago, in the mountains of Costa
Rica, the Monteverde harlequin frog (Atelopus sp.) vanished
along with the golden toad (Bufo periglenes). An estimated
67% of the 110 or so species of Atelopus, which are endemic
to the American tropics, have met the same fate, and a pathogenic
chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) is implicated.
Analysing the timing of losses in relation to changes in sea surface
and air temperatures, we conclude with ‘very high confidence’
(>99% following the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
IPCC) that large-scale warming is a key factor in the disappearances.
We propose that temperatures at many highland localities are shifting
towards the growth optimum of Batrachochytrium, thus encouraging
outbreaks. With climate change promoting infectious disease and
eroding biodiversity, the urgency of reducing greenhouse-gas concentrations
is now undeniable.
- Thomas,
et al. 2004. Extinction risk from climate change. Nature
427: 8 January.
- Abstract: Climate change over the past 30 years has produced numerous
shifts in the distributions and abundances of species and has been
implicated in one species-level extinction. Using projections of species’
distributions for future climate scenarios, we assess extinction risks
for sample regions that cover some 20% of the Earth’s terrestrial
surface. Exploring three approaches in which the estimated probability
of extinction shows a power law relationship with geographical range
size, we predict, on the basis of mid-range climate-warming scenarios
for 2050, that 15–37% of species in our sample of regions and
taxa will be "committed to extinction." When the average
of the three methods and two dispersal scenarios is taken, minimal
climate-warming scenarios produce lower projections of species committed
to extinction (18%) than mid-range (24%) and maximum change (35%)
scenarios. These estimates show the importance of rapid implementation
of technologies to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and strategies
for carbon sequestration.
- Araujo, Miguel B., Mar Cabeza, Wilfried Thuiller, Lee Hannah, and Paul H. Williams. 2004. Would climate change drive species out of reserves? An assessment of existing reserve-selection methods. Global Change Biology 10, no. 9: 1618-1626.
- Abstract: Concern for climate change has not yet been integrated in protocols for reserve selection. However if climate changes as projected, there is a possibility that current reserve-selection methods might provide solutions that are inadequate to ensure species' long-term persistence within reserves. We assessed, for the first time, the ability of existing reserve-selection methods to secure species in a climate-change context. Six methods using a different combination of criteria (representation, suitability and reserve clustering) are compared. The assessment is carried out using European distributions of 1200 plant species and considering two extreme scenarios of response to climate change: no dispersal and universal dispersal. With our data, 6-11% of species modelled would be potentially lost from selected reserves in a 50-year period. Measured uncertainties varied in 6% being 1-3% attributed to dispersal assumptions and 2-5% to the choice of reserve-selection method. Suitability approaches to reserve selection performed best, while reserve clustering performed poorly. We also found that 5% of species modelled would lose their entire climatic envelope in the studied area; 2% of the species modelled would have nonoverlapping distributions; 93% of the species modelled would maintain varying levels of overlapping distributions. We conclude there are opportunities to minimize species' extinctions within reserves but new approaches are needed to account for impacts of climate change on species; especially for those projected to have temporally nonoverlapping distributions.
- Walther,
et al. 2002. Ecological responses to recent climate change.
Nature 416, no. 6879: 389-395.
- Abstract: There is now ample evidence of the ecological impacts
of recent climate change, from polar terrestrial to tropical marine
environments. The responses of both Flora and fauna span an array
of ecosystems and organizational hierarchies, from the species to
the community levels. Despite continued uncertainty as to community
and ecosystem trajectories under global change, our review exposes
a coherent pattern of ecological change across systems. Although
we are only at an early stage in the projected trends of global
warming, ecological responses to recent climate change are already
clearly visible.
