Extinction risk from climate change
Chris D. Thomas,Alison Cameron,Rhys E. Green,Rhys E. Green,Michel Bakkenes,Linda J. Beaumont,Yvonne C. Collingham,Barend F.N. Erasmus,Marinez Ferreira de Siqueira,Alan Grainger,Lee Hannah,Lesley Hughes,Brian Huntley,Albert S. van Jaarsveld,Guy F. Midgley,Lera Miles,Lera Miles,Miguel A. Ortega-Huerta,A. Townsend Peterson,Oliver L. Phillips,Stephen E. Williams +20 more
TLDR
Estimates of extinction risks for sample regions that cover some 20% of the Earth's terrestrial surface show the importance of rapid implementation of technologies to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and strategies for carbon sequestration.Abstract:
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.read more
Citations
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Rapid warming is associated with population decline among terrestrial birds and mammals globally.
TL;DR: It is found that declines in population abundance for both birds and mammals are greater in areas where mean temperature has increased more rapidly, and that this effect is more pronounced for birds, while a strong effect of conversion to anthropogenic land use, body mass, or protected area coverage is found.
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Moving forward: dispersal and species interactions determine biotic responses to climate change.
TL;DR: Just knowing mean dispersal is insufficient to predict biotic responses to climate change, and considering interspecific dispersal variation and species interactions jointly will be necessary to anticipate future changes to biological diversity.
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Warming and free-air CO2 enrichment alter demographics in four co-occurring grassland species.
Amity L. Williams,Karen Wills,Jasmine K. Janes,Jacqueline K. Vander Schoor,Paul C. D. Newton,Mark J. Hovenden +5 more
TL;DR: Analysis of life cycle stages showed that seed production, seedling emergence and establishment were important factors in the responses of the species to global changes, and the demographic approach was very useful in understanding the variable responses of plants to globalChanges.
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Article 2 of the UNFCCC: Historical Origins, Recent Interpretations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors provide context for these studies by exploring the intertwined scientific, legal, economic, and political history of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
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The evolutionary time machine: using dormant propagules to forecast how populations can adapt to changing environments
Luisa Orsini,Luisa Orsini,Klaus Schwenk,Luc De Meester,John K. Colbourne,Michael E. Pfrender,Lawrence J. Weider +6 more
TL;DR: DNA sequence data obtained from these natural archives, combined with pioneering methods for analyzing both ecological and population genomic time-series data, are likely to provide predictive models to forecast evolutionary responses of natural populations to environmental changes resulting from natural and anthropogenic stressors, including climate change.
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