scispace - formally typeset
Open AccessJournal ArticleDOI

Extinction risk from climate change

Reads0
Chats0
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

Content maybe subject to copyright    Report

Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI

Predicting species distributions from small numbers of occurrence records: A test case using cryptic geckos in Madagascar

TL;DR: A novel jackknife validation approach is developed and tested to assess the ability to predict species occurrence when fewer than 25 occurrence records are available and the minimum sample sizes required to yield useful predictions remain difficult to determine.
Journal ArticleDOI

Ensemble forecasting of species distributions

TL;DR: It is argued that, although improved accuracy can be delivered through the traditional tasks of trying to build better models with improved data, more robust forecasts can also be achieved if ensemble forecasts are produced and analysed appropriately.
Journal ArticleDOI

The biodiversity of species and their rates of extinction, distribution, and protection

TL;DR: The biodiversity of eukaryote species and their extinction rates, distributions, and protection is reviewed, and what the future rates of species extinction will be, how well protected areas will slow extinction Rates, and how the remaining gaps in knowledge might be filled are reviewed.
Journal ArticleDOI

Sample selection bias and presence-only distribution models: implications for background and pseudo-absence data

TL;DR: It is argued that increased awareness of the implications of spatial bias in surveys, and possible modeling remedies, will substantially improve predictions of species distributions and as large an effect on predictive performance as the choice of modeling method.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI

Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities

TL;DR: A ‘silver bullet’ strategy on the part of conservation planners, focusing on ‘biodiversity hotspots’ where exceptional concentrations of endemic species are undergoing exceptional loss of habitat, is proposed.
Journal ArticleDOI

Climate change 2001: the scientific basis

TL;DR: In this article, the authors present an overview of the climate system and its dynamics, including observed climate variability and change, the carbon cycle, atmospheric chemistry and greenhouse gases, and their direct and indirect effects.
Journal ArticleDOI

A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems

TL;DR: A diagnostic fingerprint of temporal and spatial ‘sign-switching’ responses uniquely predicted by twentieth century climate trends is defined and generates ‘very high confidence’ (as laid down by the IPCC) that climate change is already affecting living systems.
Book

Species Diversity in Space and Time

TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a hierarchical dynamic puzzle to understand the relationship between habitat diversity and species diversity and the evolution of the relationships between habitats diversity and diversity in evolutionary time.
Related Papers (5)