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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Ice-age survival of Atlantic cod: agreement between palaeoecology models and genetics
Grant R. Bigg,Clifford W. Cunningham,Geir Ottersen,Grant H. Pogson,Martin R. Wadley,Phillip Williamson +5 more
TL;DR: This work examines the glacial persistence of Atlantic cod populations using two ecological-niche-models (ENM) and the first broad synthesis of multi-locus gene sequence data for this species, and suggests that the Greenland G. morhua population post-dates the LGM.
Journal ArticleDOI
Symbiont diversity may help coral reefs survive moderate climate change.
TL;DR: A model of coral and symbiotic algae ecological dynamics and symbiont evolutionary dynamics is developed, which predicts coral reef collapse within decades under multiple future climate scenarios, consistent with previous threshold-based predictions.
Implications of climate change for Australia's National Reserve System: a preliminary assessment
Michael Dunlop,Peter R. Brown +1 more
TL;DR: The Directions for the National Reserve System (NRS) as mentioned in this paper was developed through collective efforts of the Australian Government, State and Territory governments, local government, non-government, and the community.
Journal ArticleDOI
Patterns of climate-induced density shifts of species: poleward shifts faster in northern boreal birds than in southern birds.
Raimo Virkkala,Aleksi Lehikoinen +1 more
TL;DR: This work studied the change in the mean weighted latitude of density of 94 bird species in Finland, northern Europe, using data covering a north-south gradient of over 1000 km from the 1970s to the 2010s to highlight that population densities are also moving rapidly towards the poles.
Journal ArticleDOI
Including species interactions in risk assessments for global change
TL;DR: The CLIMEXt model was extended to investigate the effects of species interactions, in the same or different trophic levels, along environmental gradients on a geographical scale, and use of the scientific method to understand representative species ranges is essential.
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