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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Climate change and the migration capacity of species
TL;DR: Evidence that migration rates of two tree species at the end of the last glacial were much slower than was previously thought provides an important insight for climate-change impacts studies and suggests that the ability of species to track future climate change is limited.
Journal ArticleDOI
Potential risks for European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) in a changing climate
Arthur Geßler,Arthur Geßler,Claudia Keitel,Claudia Keitel,Jürgen Kreuzwieser,Rainer Matyssek,Wolfgang Seiler,Heinz Rennenberg +7 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors studied the impact of global climate change on the performance of European beech (Fagus sylvatica) in the southern part of central Europe.
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Disproportional risk for habitat loss of high‐altitude endemic species under climate change
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that areas of endemism of five taxonomic groups (vascular plants, snails, spiders, butterflies, and beetles) in the Austrian Alps will, on average, experience a 77% habitat loss even under the weakest climate change scenario (+1.8 °C by 2100).
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Understanding public complacency about climate change: adults’ mental models of climate change violate conservation of matter
TL;DR: The authors report experiments with highly educated adults at MIT showing widespread misunderstanding of the fundamental stock and flow relationships, including mass balance principles, that lead to long response delays, leading to high discount rates and uncertainty about the impact of climate change.
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On a collision course: competition and dispersal differences create no-analogue communities and cause extinctions during climate change
TL;DR: It is predicted that climate change will most threaten communities of species that have narrow niches, vary in dispersal (most communities) and compete strongly, and current forecasts probably underestimate climate change impacts on biodiversity by neglecting competition and dispersal differences.
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