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THE Biodiversity thread Pt. 2(merged)

Re: Report: Global biodiversity down 30 percent in 40 years

Unread postby dohboi » Tue 15 May 2012, 20:22:37

The catastrophe is not later this century, or in a few decades or years away...

It's not even "now."

We've already been deep in belly of global catastrophe, melt down of life on the planet for decades...and it's happening now faster than ever with no sign of slowing down.

Meanwhile, along the same lines:

http://phys.org/news/2012-05-one-tenth-hemisphere-mammals-outrun-climate.html

Nearly one-tenth of hemisphere's mammals unlikely to outrun climate change: study

A safe haven could be out of reach for 9 percent of the Western Hemisphere's mammals, and as much as 40 percent in certain regions, because the animals just won't move swiftly enough to outpace climate change.
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Re: Report: Global biodiversity down 30 percent in 40 years

Unread postby ritter » Wed 16 May 2012, 11:56:00

dohboi wrote:Meanwhile, along the same lines:

http://phys.org/news/2012-05-one-tenth-hemisphere-mammals-outrun-climate.html

Nearly one-tenth of hemisphere's mammals unlikely to outrun climate change: study

A safe haven could be out of reach for 9 percent of the Western Hemisphere's mammals, and as much as 40 percent in certain regions, because the animals just won't move swiftly enough to outpace climate change.


And this is wildly optimistic. It forgets that many of those animal species that can move or are able to move are entirely dependent upon the niche in which they live, largely composed of the other interrelated species of animals and plants. The plant species, especially those that compose the larger mature habitats, don't move quickly. At. All. The loss of habitat will be rapid and astounding. Animals without food don't last too long. Kind of like humans.
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Re: Report: Global biodiversity down 30 percent in 40 years

Unread postby dohboi » Wed 16 May 2012, 16:36:34

Good point. Very few animals enjoy anything like the omnivory of humans. When the few food sources their bodies have evolved to specialize in have shriveled up or migrated more quickly or slowly than they have, they will be out of luck, and food, and existence.

Note that in the article they do admit that their figures are conservative (or as you put it, "optimistic"), though for different reasons than those you put forward:

"Our figures are a fairly conservative – even optimistic – view of what could happen because our approach assumes that animals always go in the direction needed to avoid climate change and at the maximum rate possible for them," Lawler said.

The researchers were also conservative, he said, in taking into account human-made obstacles such as cities and crop lands that animals encounter.
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Re: Report: Global biodiversity down 30 percent in 40 years

Unread postby Ferretlover » Wed 16 May 2012, 17:05:37

IMO, the crop lands are a plus for many animals at this time. It's the cities, roads, stadiums, shopping malls, etc., that are not only taking up valuable land, but, also the damage they do to the land if/when/after they are removed (compression, contamination, etc).
It is overwhelming to try to consider all that the presence of flora and fauna contribute to humanity. ... sigh...
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Re: Report: Global biodiversity down 30 percent in 40 years

Unread postby dohboi » Wed 16 May 2012, 17:18:23

Not all crops are suitable for animals, and vast stretches of monoculture of any sort are deadly to anything resembling a living community. If we include bees and butterflies, iirc, they are having a better go of it in some metro areas than in the vast mono-culture wasteland that our rural areas have become. Recall that even roadside areas clumps of trees around old farmhouses have largely been wiped out, leaving little habitat for wild things.

Certainly for mammals the prospect of crossing busy streets and highways--and especially entire metro areas of them--can be a daunting prospect. Many will not make it and others will simply die in place rather than take the risk.
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Re: Report: Global biodiversity down 30 percent in 40 years

Unread postby ritter » Thu 17 May 2012, 12:06:59

Ferretlover wrote:IMO, the crop lands are a plus for many animals at this time. It's the cities, roads, stadiums, shopping malls, etc., that are not only taking up valuable land, but, also the damage they do to the land if/when/after they are removed (compression, contamination, etc).
It is overwhelming to try to consider all that the presence of flora and fauna contribute to humanity. ... sigh...

Unfortunately, croplands are deadly to most species. Pesticides, herbicides and machinery wipe out those that could make a go of it there, leaving little of value for those species higher on the food web. All that nasty chemical sh!t then runs off into waterways, further weakening the health of those inhabitants (amphibians, dependent on both land and aquatic habitat and with highly permeable skins, are rapidly disappearing--called an indicator species, like the canary in the coal mine). Corridors of "native" (used loosely) vegetation along fence lines and riparian areas, where they still exist, are the few pathways for most creatures to migrate to new territory through the deserts we call crop lands. I agree with you that cities, et. al., are poor habitats, but don't fool yourself into thinking the vast swaths of ag land are any better.

We are destined to experience life on this planet with the few opportunistic colonizer species as our only company--those we generally call weeds and pests. Kind of like us! :-D :cry:
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Re: Report: Global biodiversity down 30 percent in 40 years

Unread postby dohboi » Tue 22 May 2012, 15:41:30

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-end-of-fish-in-one-chart/2012/05/19/gIQAgcIBbU_blog.html

The end of fish, in one chart

Indeed, there’s some evidence that we’ve already hit “peak fish.” World fish production seems to have reached its zenith back in the 1980s, when the global catch was higher than it is today. And, according to one recent study in the journal Science, commercial fish stocks are on pace for total “collapse” by 2048 — meaning that they’ll produce less than 10 percent of their peak catch.
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Re: Report: Global biodiversity down 30 percent in 40 years

Unread postby dohboi » Tue 22 May 2012, 21:30:37

More plant species responding to global warming than previously thought

Far more wild plant species may be responding to global warming than previous large-scale estimates have suggested.

Many of the species that have not appeared to be altering their spring timing in recent years need cold winters to “tell” them when to become dormant and when to “wake up” in spring. With winters getting warmer, these species appear to be “waiting” for their cold cue, which can end up delaying their normal responses to the arrival of spring. The end result is species that show no change, or even a delay, in spring budding, leafing or blooming, in apparent contradiction with warming spring temperatures.

This new study resolves that contradiction for many species, indicating about two-thirds of “stable” species are, in fact, sensitive to warmer springs, but even more so to warmer winters, with the end result being a confusion in timing of leafing, budding or blooming.


http://phys.org/news/2012-05-species-global-previously-thought.html

In general, I'm seeing a lot more interest in phenology across the web, c.f.:

Nature's Notebook


Welcome to Nature's Notebook, a national plant and animal phenology observation program


http://www.usanpn.org/participate/observe
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Re: From ocean to ozone: Earth's nine life-support systems

Unread postby dohboi » Tue 22 May 2012, 22:26:32

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/05/22/486604/manmade-pollutants-may-be-driving-earths-tropical-belt-expansion-and-subtropical-dust-bowlification/

Manmade Pollutants May Be Driving Earth’s Tropical Belt Expansion And Subtropical Dust-Bowlification
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Re: Report: Global biodiversity down 30 percent in 40 years

Unread postby dohboi » Wed 30 May 2012, 22:00:08

http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2012/05/web-of-marine-life-disintegrating-under.html

Web of marine life disintegrating under human onslaught

Oceans cover about 72 percent of Earth's surface area and there are an estimated 250,000 marine species. "Yet, despite its importance, marine biodiversity has not fared well at human hands," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today in his message to mark the International Day for Biological Diversity.

More than half of global fisheries are exhausted and a further third depleted, warned the secretary-general. Between 30 and 35 percent of critical marine environments, such as seagrasses, mangroves and coral reefs, have been destroyed.

Plastic debris continues to kill marine life, and polluted runoff from land-based activities is deadening vast areas of coastal waters, leaving these dead zones without oxygen.

"Added to all of this," said Ban, "increased burning of fossil fuels is affecting the global climate, making the sea surface warmer, causing sea level to rise and increasing ocean acidity, with consequences we are only beginning to comprehend."
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Re: Report: Global biodiversity down 30 percent in 40 years

Unread postby Lore » Wed 30 May 2012, 22:11:59

The canaries in the coal mine have long been warning us. Bees, bats and amphibians have all just about had it.
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Re: Report: Global biodiversity down 30 percent in 40 years

Unread postby dohboi » Thu 31 May 2012, 09:58:28

And hummingbirds:

http://phys.org/news/2012-05-hummingbirds.html


Where have all the hummingbirds gone?


The glacier lily as it's called, is a tall, willowy plant that graces mountain meadows throughout western North America. It flowers early in spring, when the first bumblebees and hummingbirds appear.

Or did.

The lily, a plant that grows best on subalpine slopes, is fast becoming a hothouse flower. In Earth's warming temperatures, its first blooms appear some 17 days earlier than they did in the 1970s, scientists David Inouye and Amy McKinney of the University of Maryland and colleagues have found.

The problem, say the biologists, with the earlier timing of these first blooms is that the glacier lily is no longer synchronized with the arrival of broad-tailed hummingbirds, which depend on glacier lilies for nectar.

By the time the hummingbirds fly in, many of the flowers have withered away, their nectar-laden blooms going with them.

Broad-tailed hummingbirds migrate north from Central America every spring to high-mountain breeding sites in the western United States. The birds have only a short mountain summer to raise their young. Male hummingbirds scout for territories before the first flowers bloom.

But the time between the first hummingbird and the first bloom has collapsed by 13 days over the past four decades, say Inouye and McKinney. "In some years," says McKinney, "the lilies have already bloomed by the time the first hummingbird lands."

The biologists calculate that if current trends continue, in two decades the hummingbirds will miss the first flowers entirely...

"These conflicting pressures challenge society to ensure that species don't soon find themselves without a suitable place to live."


As things shift, these kinds of mismatches have been, are now, and increasingly will be seen in more and more cases.

It's not just a case of species migrating north (or south in the southern hemisphere) to move away from the hottest temperatures. They all have to migrate at the same rate to the same regions, or they will be out of a crucial food source, or a pollenator...
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Re: Report: Global biodiversity down 30 percent in 40 years

Unread postby ritter » Thu 31 May 2012, 11:32:00

Ecology is wildly complex. We have no clue the things we have destroyed with our actions and the destruction yet to come. Enjoy nature while it lasts. Things will be dead and barren sooner than our hubris will allow us to consider.

In 200 years, we have destroyed what has taken 10s of thousands of years to come to be. Or one magic hand wave, if you're inclined to that belief. Either way, our shame should know no bounds.
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Re: Report: Global biodiversity down 30 percent in 40 years

Unread postby dohboi » Fri 01 Jun 2012, 11:28:47

"what has taken 10s of thousands of years to come to be"

Longer than that when you consider how long it took to develop the current species on the planet.
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Re: Report: Global biodiversity down 30 percent in 40 years

Unread postby dohboi » Sun 03 Jun 2012, 13:27:14

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/opinion/sunday/are-we-in-the-midst-of-a-sixth-mass-extinction.html

Protecting Many Species to Help Our Own


[quote]NEARLY 20,000 species of animals and plants around the globe are considered high risks for extinction in the wild. That’s according to the most authoritative compilation of living things at risk — the so-called Red List maintained by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

This should keep us awake at night...

Benefits provided by ecosystems are vastly undervalued. Take pollination of crops as an example: according to a major United Nations report on the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, the total economic value of pollination by insects worldwide was in the ballpark of $200 billion in 2005. More generally, efforts to tally the global monetary worth of the many different benefits provided by ecosystems come up with astronomically high numbers, measured in tens of trillions of dollars.

These ecosystem services are commonly considered “public goods” — available to everyone for free. But this is a fundamental failure of economics because neither the fragility nor the finiteness of natural systems is recognized. We need markets that put a realistic value on nature, and we need effective environmental legislation that protects entire ecosystems. quote]

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/01/opinion/sunday/are-we-in-the-midst-of-a-sixth-mass-extinction.html

(Another version of the same excellent article, but with better graphics--though with a stupider title.)
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Re: Report: Global biodiversity down 30 percent in 40 years

Unread postby M_B_S » Tue 12 Jun 2012, 06:38:19

http://populationmatters.org/documents/ ... ountry.pdf

:idea:

USA + Canada is a nice calculation trick!

The numbers for the USA allone are much more bad......
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Re: From ocean to ozone: Earth's nine life-support systems

Unread postby dorlomin » Sun 30 Sep 2012, 13:35:40

Fish to shrink by up to a quarter due to climate change, study reveals

"We will see dramatic changes in the oceans likely to reduce productivity," said Roberts. "One billion people rely on fish for primary animal protein and that is going to increase, especially in developing countries. We have to get to grips with our dependence on fossil fuels otherwise we are stuffed."

The fish shrinkage predicted by the new research results from two effects: the difficulty of growing in warmer, oxygen-poor waters, and migration.

"The metabolic rate of fish in the warm oceans increases and therefore they need more oxygen," said Cheung, whose work is published in Nature Climate Change. But warm water holds less oxygen and so their growth is limited.

In addition, there are more small-bodied fish in the tropics and these will migrate to temperate or polar regions as the ocean warms, reducing the average fish size.
Lastly, Roberts said the heating of the oceans means that the warmer layer at the surface mixes less with the colder layer below. As the colder layer contains most of the nutrients, that means less food for fish. "We are already seeing some evidence of this, as oceanic 'deserts' are getting larger."
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Re: THE Biodiversity thread Pt. 2(merged)

Unread postby dohboi » Sat 01 Feb 2014, 15:22:36

Time to bump this with a post from Jim Hansen to his granddaughter:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/ ... ophie1.pdf
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Re: THE Biodiversity thread Pt. 2(merged)

Unread postby Keith_McClary » Fri 07 Feb 2014, 19:06:44

A 'smoking gun' on the Ice Age megafauna extinctions
It was climate that killed many of the large mammals after the latest Ice Age. But what more specifically was it with the climate that led to this mass extinction? The answer to this is hidden in a large number of sediment samples from around the Arctic and in the gut content from permafrozen woolly rhinos, mammoth and other extinct ice age mammals.

It is a bit of a shift in paradigme Willerslev and co-workers publish in this week's edition of the journal Nature. The common image of a light-brown grass-steppe dominating the northern hemisphere during the Ice Age does not hold any longer. The landscape was far more diverse and stable than today, and big animals like woolly rhino and mammoth fed on grasses and particularly on protein-rich forbs. But at the Last Glacial Maximum 25,000 – 15,000 years ago, at a time when the climate was at its coldest and driest, a major loss of plant diversity took place. The animals barely survived.
After the Ice Age ended about 10,000 years ago it became warmer again. After the large reduction of plant diversity during the Last Glacial Maximum another kind of vegetation now appeared. One of the key food sources of the large mammals– the protein-rich forbs – did not fully recover to their former abundance. This likely proved fatal for species like woolly rhino, mammoth, and horse in Asia and North America. Even though it became warmer again after the end of the Ice Age the old landscapes did not return.
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