Preface to the Princeton Landmarks in Biology Edition vii Preface xi Symbols Used xiii 1. The Importance of Islands 3 2. Area and Number of Speicies 8 3. Further Explanations of the Area-Diversity Pattern 19 4. The Strategy of Colonization 68 5. Invasibility and the Variable Niche 94 6. Stepping Stones and Biotic Exchange 123 7. Evolutionary Changes Following Colonization 145 8. Prospect 181 Glossary 185 References 193 Index 201

The Theory of Island Biogeography

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.

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Ecological responses to recent climate change.

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

https://www.fws.gov/southwest/es/documents/R2ES/LitCited/LPC_2012/Parmesan_2006.pdf

Ecological and Evolutionary Responses to Recent Climate Change

Climate change over the past approximately 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 ( approximately 18%) than mid-range ( approximately 24%) and maximum-change ( approximately 35%) scenarios. These estimates show the importance of rapid implementation of technologies to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and strategies for carbon sequestration.

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Extinction risk from climate change

Global energy consumption is projected to increase, even in the face of substantial declines in energy intensity, at least 2-fold by midcentury relative to the present because of population and economic growth. This demand could be met, in principle, from fossil energy resources, particularly coal. However, the cumulative nature of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere demands that holding atmospheric CO2 levels to even twice their preanthropogenic values by midcentury will require invention, development, and deployment of schemes for carbon-neutral energy production on a scale commensurate with, or larger than, the entire present-day energy supply from all sources combined. Among renewable energy resources, solar energy is by far the largest exploitable resource, providing more energy in 1 hour to the earth than all of the energy consumed by humans in an entire year. In view of the intermittency of insolation, if solar energy is to be a major primary energy source, it must be stored and dispatched on demand to the end user. An especially attractive approach is to store solar-converted energy in the form of chemical bonds, i.e., in a photosynthetic process at a year-round average efficiency significantly higher than current plants or algae, to reduce land-area requirements. Scientific challenges involved with this process include schemes to capture and convert solar energy and then store the energy in the form of chemical bonds, producing oxygen from water and a reduced fuel such as hydrogen, methane, methanol, or other hydrocarbon species.

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Powering the planet: Chemical challenges in solar energy utilization

Climatic Change 100th volume: be careful what you wish for!—what if you get it?

As we are approaching the 30th anniversary of the founding of Climatic Change, an anniversary that hopefully signifies the attainment of maturity, it’s a good time to take brief stock of where we have been and where we are now going (this is an update of the 1998 Editorial Policy (Schneider, 1998)). Clearly, the basic tenets of the original editorial policy (see Schneider, 1977), worked out with the guidance of the original Editorial Board, are still retained. That is, peer-reviewed papers in Climatic Change are based on three criteria: (1) clarity of communication so the paper is accessible to a broad, multi-disciplinary audience, (2) state-of-the-art (although not necessarily original) treatment of the material drawn from various disciplines, and (3) originality in the combination of material from several disciplines, either to explore the interactions of coupled systems, to provide an original synthesis or to examine solutions to a real problem. In short, Climatic Change defines and sustains the review process to achieve “interdisciplinary quality”: accessible writing, multidisciplinary accuracy, and interdisciplinary originality. As we enter our 30th year, not only have we revalidated the effectiveness of these quality review standards, but we have matured in the sense that Climatic Change increasingly receives papers of higher overall quality and more interdisciplinarity relative to the early years of the journal. Moreover, peer reviewers now better understand and accept the above three criteria for judging interdisciplinary quality. This strengthening and stability of Climatic Change as a high impact journal is also reflected in the frequency and number of published pages since the inception of Climatic Change, which has transformed it from a somewhat irregular journal published about twice a year in the mid-70s to a regular bi-monthly journal in 2006. This stability has come despite the proliferation of several “competitive” journals in the past decade or so, suggesting the overall field of interdisciplinary global change science, technology, and policy studies has matured along with Climatic Change. In addition, a significant increase in the number and length of Special Issues has been implemented to allow deeper, broader, and more convenient coverage of such important topics as global warming, deforestation, climate extremes, climate policy, economic impacts, historical insights, and hydrology, which cannot be as comprehensively treated by stand-alone contributed papers. Although individual papers in Special Issues often do not have the degree of interdisciplinarity that we hope to achieve from contributed papers in normal issues, the Special Issue guest editors and I work together to be sure that the collection of papers presents a comprehensive whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Like contributed

Climatic Change Editorial Policy 2006

Climatic models are increasingly being used to answer “cosmic questions” such as the possibility of an ice-covered Earth or a runaway greenhouse effect, or to examine the coevolution of climate and life. Conclusions from these models on such issues, of course, rest on the physical parameterizations of the models. Some of the basic parameterizations are reexamined quantitatively, and it is concluded that presently believed uncertainties in these parameterizations lead to an order-of-magnitude uncertainty in estimates of the sensitivity of the present Earth's climate to external forcings (like a change in solar constant). However, seasonal simulations with present Earth models suggest that estimates of the overall sensitivity of the climate to external forcing may be narrowed (over decadal time scales) to, perhaps, a factor of 2. But the effects of glaciers, continental locations, and atmospheric composition, all of which can change on geological time scales, further enhance the uncertainties in long-term climatic sensitivity estimates from state-of-the-art models. But it is precisely these long-term estimates of climatic sensitivity which support quantitative conclusions on, for example, the possible existence of continuously habitable zones around main-sequence stars. We believe that those who draw cosmic conclusions from climatic models should at least attempt to bracket the final results by repeating their calculations over a plausible range of uncertainty in basic model parameterizations.

Cosmic Conclusions from Climatic Models - can they BE Justified

Future Climatic Change and Energy System Planning: Are Risk Assessment Methods Applicable?

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Stephen H. Schneider

Papers

Climatic Change 100th volume: be careful what you wish for!—what if you get it?

Climatic Change Editorial Policy 2006

Cosmic Conclusions from Climatic Models - can they BE Justified

Future Climatic Change and Energy System Planning: Are Risk Assessment Methods Applicable?

Climate policy: role of scientists in public advocacy.