2008 Woodie Awards
Biodiversity Threatened by Climate Change
Professor Jeffrey Corbin: Biology Department
Issue date: 10/18/07 Section: Sci/Tech
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Last week, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for its study of the impacts of climate change on the environment. The IPCC has produced the most comprehensive reports detailing the many ecosystems that humans rely upon in crucial ways are vulnerable to the anticipated changes in temperatures and precipitation patterns.
As technologically advanced as modern humans are, we are dependent upon plants and animals to perform crucial services. These services include the production of food, the removal of pollutants and impurities in water, the protection of coastal resources from flooding, just to name a few. Yet, our inputs of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and the resultant changes in the Earth's climate threaten to strain the ability of these ecosystems to function in the way to which we have grown accustomed.
Scientists have documented hundreds of cases of changes in the ecology of plants and animals. For example, brown bears in Spain have adapted to the recent mild winters by skipping their hibernation. And, the Pinon mouse in California's Sierra Nevada mountains, restricted to elevations below 7000 ft in the 1920s, is now found above 10,000 ft. Closer to home, a study of six frog species in Ithaca, NY showed that these frogs begin calling for mates 10-13 days earlier than they did 100 years earlier. Each of these changes in species' distributions, or phenology, is consistent with what we would expect to happen as the earth's climate warms.
Just as one swallow does not make a summer, so too is it dangerous to take any one, or even several reports, as evidence that global climate change is altering the ecology of plants and animals. Much stronger evidence comes when we look at such studies collectively, to see if a consistent pattern emerges.
Terry Root of Stanford University and several colleagues did just that - they examined 143 studies of changes in the range, elevation, or timing of key events in the annual life cycles of plants and animals. Their results were striking: four out of five of the changes were in the direction that we would expect if climate change was a factor - e.g. shifting ranges toward the poles or higher elevations, shifting migrations later in the fall and earlier into the winter, or the lengthening of plant growing seasons.
As technologically advanced as modern humans are, we are dependent upon plants and animals to perform crucial services. These services include the production of food, the removal of pollutants and impurities in water, the protection of coastal resources from flooding, just to name a few. Yet, our inputs of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and the resultant changes in the Earth's climate threaten to strain the ability of these ecosystems to function in the way to which we have grown accustomed.
Scientists have documented hundreds of cases of changes in the ecology of plants and animals. For example, brown bears in Spain have adapted to the recent mild winters by skipping their hibernation. And, the Pinon mouse in California's Sierra Nevada mountains, restricted to elevations below 7000 ft in the 1920s, is now found above 10,000 ft. Closer to home, a study of six frog species in Ithaca, NY showed that these frogs begin calling for mates 10-13 days earlier than they did 100 years earlier. Each of these changes in species' distributions, or phenology, is consistent with what we would expect to happen as the earth's climate warms.
Just as one swallow does not make a summer, so too is it dangerous to take any one, or even several reports, as evidence that global climate change is altering the ecology of plants and animals. Much stronger evidence comes when we look at such studies collectively, to see if a consistent pattern emerges.
Terry Root of Stanford University and several colleagues did just that - they examined 143 studies of changes in the range, elevation, or timing of key events in the annual life cycles of plants and animals. Their results were striking: four out of five of the changes were in the direction that we would expect if climate change was a factor - e.g. shifting ranges toward the poles or higher elevations, shifting migrations later in the fall and earlier into the winter, or the lengthening of plant growing seasons.
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