As the oceans warm, wide-ranging species will have an edge

Terra Daily via SPX: Marine species that already have large ranges are extending their territories fastest in response to climate change, according to new research from University of British Columbia biodiversity experts.

The study is one of the first comprehensive looks at how traits--other than thermal niche--impact marine animals' ability to respond to climate change. It could help improve global predictions of how different species redistribute as the oceans warm, and identify species in greatest jeopardy.

"We have a bit of a mystery as to why some animals are moving quickly into cooler waters, like the green sea urchin that is decimating kelp forests in Tasmania, while other species aren't moving at all," says UBC biodiversity researcher Jennifer Sunday, lead author of the study.

"Our findings indicate that animals which already have wide-latitudinal ranges, habitat generalists, and species with high adult mobility displayed the quickest and greatest range shifts. The flip side is that small-ranging species are in increased jeopardy as our planet's oceans continue to warm."....

Oscar (Astronotus ocellatus), a popular aquarium fish from South America, shot by Jón Helgi Jónsson (Amything), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Hydroelectric dams drastically reduce tropical forest biodiversity

A press release from the University of East Anglia: Widely hailed as ‘green’ sources of renewable energy, hydroelectric dams have been built worldwide at an unprecedented scale. But research from the University of East Anglia reveals that these major infrastructure projects are far from environmentally friendly.

A study published today in PLOS ONE reveals the drastic effects of the major Amazonian Balbina Dam on tropical rainforest biodiversity. The research reveals a loss of mammals, birds and tortoises from the vast majority of islands formed by the creation of the vast Balbina Lake, one of the world’s largest hydroelectric reservoirs.

Lead author Dr Maíra Benchimol..., a former PhD student at UEA and now at Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, Bahia, Brazil, said: “Hydroelectric dams have been thought to be an environmentally friendly source of renewable power – and in recent years they have been built to supply the burgeoning energy demands of emergent tropical countries. Previous studies have shown that large dams result in severe losses in fishery revenues, increases in greenhouse gas emissions, and socioeconomic costs to local communities. Our research adds evidence that forest biodiversity also pays a heavy price when large dams are built.

Prof Carlos Peres, from UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences, said: “Of course, it is widely known that dams cause massive population losses in terrestrial and tree-dwelling species within lowland forest areas that are flooded. However, we’re only beginning to realize the staggering extent of extinctions in forest areas that remain above water as habitat islands.

“The Brazilian government is currently planning to build hundreds of new dams in some of the world’s most biodiverse tropical forest regions. But the high biodiversity costs of mega dams should be carefully weighed against any benefits of hydropower production.”...

Near Balbina Dam in Brazil, shot by Seabirds, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

High seas fishing ban could boost global catches, equality

A press release from the University of British Columbia: Closing the high seas to commercial fishing could distribute fisheries income more equitably among the world’s maritime nations, according to research from the University of British Columbia (UBC).

The analysis of fisheries data indicates that if increased spillover of fish stocks from protected international waters were to boost coastal catches by 18 per cent, current global catches would be maintained. When the researchers modelled less conservative estimates of stock spillover, catches in coastal waters surpassed current global levels.

“We should use international waters as the world’s fish bank,” says Rashid Sumaila, director of the UBC Fisheries Economics Research Unit and lead author of the study. “Restricting fisheries activities to coastal waters is economically and environmentally sensible, particularly as the industry faces diminishing returns.”

...The study also indicates that a high-seas moratorium would improve fisheries income distribution among maritime nations. Currently, 10 high seas fishing nations capture 71 per cent of the landed value of catches in international waters.

Under all scenarios considered by the researchers, European Member States, Group of Eight nations, and least developed fishing nations would benefit the most from a closure. Under a catch-neutral scenario, the United States, Guam and the United Kingdom would benefit the most, each with potential increases in landed values of more than $250 million (USD) per year. Canada would see an increase of $125 million (USD) per year....

Map of gains and losses from the proposed plan from the University of British Columbia website

Fundamental change needed to save biodiversity

A press release from the Wildlife Conservation Society: When properly supported, protected areas are an invaluable tool in safeguarding biodiversity, says Dr. James Watson, Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Climate Change Program. But, he says with a group of colleagues in an article published Nov. 5 in Nature, only one in four is well managed. A fundamental change, they say, involving an increase in funding and a renewed political commitment is urgently needed to ensure that protected areas meet their full potential.

In advance of the paper's publication, Dr. Watson answered a few questions on the subject: What are the top three to five points you want people to take away from this Nature paper?

Protected areas (PAs), when well financed, and well resourced, work. Have a look at protected areas that save tigers, that save elephants, that sustain coral reef fisheries. They work becauce they stop destructive activities – plain and simple.

However, not all of them work. Only 20 percent of PAs are well managed which means 80 percent of PAs are not getting the funding they need. There is also clear evidence showing many nations around the world are backtracking their commitments towards PAs, leading to their delisting, degazetting and downsizing. These are not just in a few corrupt developing countries but the whole shabam – first world nations are leading the way in this poor behavior.

We need to recognize this backtrack. Tomeet the CBD commitments that nations have committed to, we need a step-change in terms of government commitment and funding. Money is important – and at about 70 billion dollars – doing the right thing is quite cheap (especially when one considers what we spend on the military). But is not simply about money … it’s about planning effectively. As the world’s population expands, as every nation on earth puts in place their economic development pathways, we need to actively and urgently identify those great landscapes and seascapes that are still functional, that still contain all of their species, and by their own nature make them resilient to climate change. We then need to actively seek their protection. We need to recognize that what we protect in the next 20 years counts the most because in 2030 there will be limited options for future appointments for PAs. The time to act is now....

A vernal pool in spring, US Fish and Wildlife photo

Can fossils reveal how to reverse biodiversity loss?

Environmental News Network via Click Green: Many native species have vanished from tropical islands because of human impact, but University of Florida scientists have discovered how fossils can be used to restore lost biodiversity.

The key lies in organic materials found in fossil bones, which contain evidence for how ancient ecosystems functioned, according to a new study published in the September issue of the Journal of Herpetology.

Pre-human island ecosystems provide vital clues for saving endangered island species and re-establishing native species, said lead author Alex Hastings, who conducted work for the study as graduate student at the Florida Museum of Natural History and UF department of geological sciences.

"Our work is particularly relevant to endangered species that are currently living in marginal environments," said Hastings, currently a postdoctoral researcher at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. "A better understanding of species’ natural roles in ecosystems untouched by people might improve their prospects for survival."…

Barracudasauroides panxianensis Stage : Anisian from 247.2 million years ago until ~242 million years ago. Shot by Didier Descouens, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license

Stanford biologist warns of early stages of Earth's 6th mass extinction event

Bjorn Carey in the Stanford University News Service:  The planet's current biodiversity, the product of 3.5 billion years of evolutionary trial and error, is the highest in the history of life. But it may be reaching a tipping point. In a new review of scientific literature and analysis of data published in Science, an international team of scientists cautions that the loss and decline of animals is contributing to what appears to be the early days of the planet's sixth mass biological extinction event.

Since 1500, more than 320 terrestrial vertebrates have become extinct. Populations of the remaining species show a 25 percent average decline in abundance. The situation is similarly dire for invertebrate animal life.

And while previous extinctions have been driven by natural planetary transformations or catastrophic asteroid strikes, the current die-off can be associated to human activity, a situation that the lead author Rodolfo Dirzo, a professor of biology at Stanford, designates an era of "Anthropocene defaunation."

Across vertebrates, 16 to 33 percent of all species are estimated to be globally threatened or endangered. Large animals – described as megafauna and including elephants, rhinoceroses, polar bears and countless other species worldwide – face the highest rate of decline, a trend that matches previous extinction events.

Larger animals tend to have lower population growth rates and produce fewer offspring. They need larger habitat areas to maintain viable populations. Their size and meat mass make them easier and more attractive hunting targets for humans.

Although these species represent a relatively low percentage of the animals at risk, their loss would have trickle-down effects that could shake the stability of other species and, in some cases, even human health.

..."Where human density is high, you get high rates of defaunation, high incidence of rodents, and thus high levels of pathogens, which increases the risks of disease transmission," said Dirzo, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. "Who would have thought that just defaunation would have all these dramatic consequences? But it can be a vicious circle."...

An elephant killed by hunters in what was then German East Africa

Growth, global warming threaten African species

Moki Edwin Kindzeka in Voice of America: Researchers meeting in Cameroon say Africa may lose up to 30 percent of its animal and plant species by the end of the century due to global warming, population growth and unregulated development. The researchers from 20 African, American and European universities say sub-Saharan Africa is losing forest land faster than any place on Earth.

Loggers are cutting down trees to meet unrelenting timber demand from China, Europe and the United States. Meanwhile, countries are recording 3 percent population growth per year, and land that was once covered by forests is being used for homes, industries and plantations for cash crops. That means a loss of habitat for many types of African animals and plants, that are already under pressure from the rise in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and ensuing global warming.

Thomas Smith, from the Center for Tropical Research at the University of California, said, "With a 1.5 degree rise in global temperature, Africa may lose 30 percent of its animals and plants. And unfortunately with the increase in CO2 that has been now estimated to be up to three degrees in terms of rising global temperatures --  that means we may lose 40 percent of all mammal species in Africa by the end of the century."

An example of the animals disappearing is the African chimpanzee. Mary Katherine Gonder of the Department of Biology at Drexel University, said the chimps' forest home is disappearing, and the animals themselves continue to be hunted and sold as food in and around the Congo Basin forests.

"What will happen over the next 20 years, the distribution of those chimpanzees will change," said Gonder. "Their habitat will change fundamentally and they will no longer be around. So it is a real threat. The habitat for those chimpanzees will be gone."....

Sulky chimpanzee (drawn by T. W. Wood). Figure 18 from Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Caption reads "FIG. 18.—Chimpanzee disappointed and sulky. Drawn from life by Mr. Wood."

Climate change devastates Antarctic seabed ecosystems

Blue & Green Tomorrow: Climate change is decimating populations of tiny species that live on the seabed of the Antarctic shore, threatening ecosystem stability and life higher up the food chain, scientists have warned.  In a paper published on Monday in the journal Current Biology, scientists describe how the warming of Antarctic waters over the last two decades has al
lowed icebergs to drift more freely, battering the seabed as they do.

This has made it harder for most species to prosper on the seabed – where most forms of Antarctic life actually live. One species – fenestrulina rugula, a kind of sea moss – has thrived, the researchers found, filling the gap thanks to its remarkably fast growth and reproduction rate. “It’s a quite inconspicuous, really quite a weedy little thing”, the study’s lead author David Barnes, of the British Antarctic Survey, told the BBC.

“Now if you go there and picked up a boulder, 99 out of every 100 beasts that you would find on it would be that.” While this is good news for fenestrulina rugula, it’s bad news for the biodiversity of the region. The study notes that what was once an intricate ecosystem, made up of many competing species, is now lost.

“Now it all revolves around a single species”, Barnes said. “This means specialist predators will now have less food and the biological system is less stable, and thus more susceptible to environmental change.”

One survey, conducted in 2013, at a spot close to the area studied by Barnes and his colleagues, even found large areas where no life at all could be found. This was the first time that had ever been reported, despite frequent surveys of the area, scientists say. Such findings should concern us all, because the Antarctic Peninsula ”is like a canary in a coal mine”, Barnes said in a statement....

Port Lockroy, Antarctica, shot by Liam Quinn, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license 

Peru’s Manu National Park sets new biodiversity record

Robert Sanders at the UC Berkeley News Center: Peru’s treasured Manu National Park is the world’s top biodiversity hotspot for reptiles and amphibians, according to a new survey published last month by biologists from the University of California, Berkeley, Southern Illinois University in Carbondale (SIU-Carbondale) and Illinois Wesleyan University.

The park, which encompasses lowland Amazonian rain forest, high-altitude cloud forest and Andean grassland east of Cuzco, is well known for its huge variety of bird life, which attracts ecotourists from around the globe. More than 1,000 species of birds, about 10 percent of the world’s bird species; more than 1,200 species of butterflies; and now 287 reptiles and amphibians have been recorded in the park.

Postdoc Rudolf von May discusses the reptile and amphibian biodiversity in Peru’s Manu National Park. Video by Phil Ebiner and Roxanne Makasdjian. Photos and video footage by Alessandro Catenazzi, SIU-Carbondale, and Rudolf von May, UC Berkeley.

“For reptiles and amphibians, Manu and its buffer zone now stands out as the most diverse protected area anywhere,” said study coauthor Rudolf von May, a postdoctoral researcher in UC Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.

Despite the park’s abundant and diverse animal life, von May said, not all is well in the preserve. The devastating chytrid fungus has caused a decline in the number of frogs there, as it has elsewhere around the world, while deforestation for subsistence living, gold mining and oil and gas drilling are encroaching on the buffer zones around the park.

“All of this is threatening the biodiversity in the park and the native peoples who live in settlements in the park,” von May said. At least four Amazonian tribes and a nomadic group of hunter-gatherers known as Mashco-Piro live within the confines of Manu National Park and its buffer zone....

A new species of stream-living lizard discovered in Manu National Park, Peru, by Alessandro Catenazzi. Catenazzi of Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, UC Berkeley postdoc Rudolf von May and taxonomist Edgar Lehr of Illinois Wesleyan University have completed a survey of the park and its buffer zone, uncovering a greater diversity of reptiles and amphibians than any other protected area in the world. Alessandro Catenazzi image.

Cities support more native biodiversity than previously thought

Julie Cohen in the Current at the University of California (Santa Barbara): The rapid conversion of natural lands to cement-dominated urban centers is causing great losses in biodiversity. Yet, according to a new study involving 147 cities worldwide, surprisingly high numbers of plant and animal species persist and even flourish in urban environments — to the tune of hundreds of bird species and thousands of plant species in a single city.

Contrary to conventional wisdom that cities are a wasteland for biodiversity, the study found that while a few species — such as pigeons and annual meadow grass — are shared across cities, overall the mix of species in cities reflects the unique biotic heritage of their geographic location. The findings of the study conducted by a working group at UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) and funded by the National Science Foundation were published today in the Proceedings B, a journal of the Royal Society of Biological Sciences.

“While urbanization has caused cities to lose large numbers of plants and animals, the good news is that cities still retain endemic native species, which opens the door for new policies on regional and global biodiversity conservation,” said lead author and NCEAS working group member Myla F. J. Aronson, a research scientist in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

The study highlights the value of green space in cities, which have become important refuges for native species and migrating wildlife. This phenomenon has been named the Central Park Effect because of the surprisingly large number of species found in New York’s Central Park, a relatively small island of green within a metropolis.

Unlike previous urban biodiversity research, this study looks beyond the local impacts of urbanization and considers overall impacts on global biodiversity. The research team created the largest global dataset to date of two diverse taxa in cities: birds (54 cities) and plants (110 cities)....

A feral pigeon on the Empire State Building. Shot by ZeroOne, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Arctic biodiversity under serious threat from climate change

Jens Christian Pedersen at Aarhus University (Denmark): Unique and irreplaceable Arctic wildlife and landscapes are crucially at risk due to global warming caused by human activities according to the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment (ABA), a new report prepared by 253 scientists from 15 countries under the auspices of the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), the biodiversity working group of the Arctic Council.

“An entire bio-climatic zone, the high Arctic, may disappear. Polar bears and the other highly adapted organisms cannot move further north, so they may go extinct. We risk losing several species forever,” says Hans Meltofte of Aarhus University, chief scientist of the report.

From the iconic polar bear and elusive narwhal to the tiny Arctic flowers and lichens that paint the tundra in the summer months, the Arctic is home to a diversity of highly adapted animal, plant, fungal and microbial species. All told, there are more than 21,000 species.

Maintaining biodiversity in the Arctic is important for many reasons. For Arctic peoples, biodiversity is a vital part of their material and spiritual existence. Arctic fisheries and tourism have global importance and represent immense economic value. Millions of Arctic birds and mammals that migrate and connect the Arctic to virtually all parts of the globe are also at risk from climate change in the Arctic as well as from development and hunting in temperate and
tropical areas. Marine and terrestrial ecosystems such as vast areas of lowland tundra, wetlands, mountains, extensive shallow ocean shelves, millennia-old ice shelves and huge seabird cliffs are characteristic to the Arctic. These are now at stake, according to the report.

“Climate change is by far the worst threat to Arctic biodiversity. Temperatures are expected to increase more in the Arctic compared to the global average, resulting in severe disruptions to Arctic biodiversity some of which are already visible,” warns Meltofte.

A planetary increase of 2°C, the worldwide agreed upon acceptable limit of warming, is projected to result in vastly more heating in the Arctic with anticipated temperature increases of 2.8-7.8°C this century. Such dramatic changes will likely result in severe damage to Arctic biodiversity....

A polar bear near Spitsbergen, shot by Jerzy Strzelecki, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Fungi are the rainforest 'diversity police'

A press release from the University of Exeter: A new study has revealed that fungi, often seen as pests, play a crucial role policing biodiversity in rainforests. The research, by scientists at Oxford University, the University of Exeter and Sheffield University, found that fungi regulate diversity in rainforests by making dominant species victims of their own success.

Fungi spread quickly between closely-packed plants of the same species, preventing them from dominating and enabling a wider range of species to flourish. “In the plant world, close relatives make bad neighbours,” said Dr Owen Lewis of Oxford University's Department of Zoology, who led the study. “Seedlings growing near plants of the same species are more likely to die and we now know why. It has long been suspected that something in the soil is responsible, and we've now shown that fungi play a crucial role. It's astonishing to see microscopic fungi having such a profound effect on entire rainforests.

“Fungi prevent any single species from dominating rainforests as they spread more easily between plants and seedlings of the same species. If lots of plants from one species grow in the same place, fungi quickly cut their population down to size, levelling the playing field to give rarer species a fighting chance. Plots sprayed with fungicide soon become dominated by a few species at the expense of many others, leading to a marked drop in diversity.”

...Scientists had suspected that fungus-like microorganisms called oomycetes might also play a part in policing rainforest diversity, but this now seems unlikely. Professor Sarah Gurr, of Biosciences at the University of Exeter, said: “Oomycetes are potent pathogens that can cause seeds and seedlings to rot, and were responsible for the 1840s potato famine. To see if they play a role in promoting rainforest biodiversity, we sprayed plots with a fungicide which protects plants against oomycetes called Ridomil Gold. It had no significant effect on the number of surviving species, suggesting that true fungi and not oomycetes are driving rainforest diversity.” The findings help to explain why tropical rainforests are so much more diverse than forests in temperate countries....

An 1898 drawing of an oomycete

Innovative report calls for a new security agenda for Amazonia

Digital Journal via PRWEB UK:  In a report released today, the Global Canopy Programme and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture call for a new security agenda for Amazonia and its countries. One that focuses not only on national security in a traditional sense, but acts to strengthen the fundamental underpinnings of a flourishing society: sustained access to water, energy, food and good health for all.

Manuel Pulgar, Minister of Environment for Peru (host country of the UNFCCC Climate Change Summit COP 20 – December 2014) said, “Climate change is a global problem, but one that will multiply local and regional problems in unforeseeable ways. In Latin America, we have taken Amazonia and its seemingly limitless water and forests as a given. But recent unprecedented droughts have shown us just what happens when that water security falters: it impacts food and energy production, it affects the wellbeing of entire populations, and it leaves governments and businesses with a big bill to pay. The science is clear, so we cannot afford to miss the opportunity for positive action now.”

The report, developed with input from science experts and political leaders from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, lays out initial recommendations as building blocks for dialogue and action in each of these countries. Since Amazonia’s ecosystems are shared between countries, there is also a need for governments to collaborate on coordinated responses to these shared risks.

Carlos Klink, Brazil’s National Secretary for Climate Change and Environmental Quality, said: “We are understanding more and more how interdependent water, food, energy and health security are across our continent. There is also interdependence between the countries that share the Amazon, which recycles trillions of tons of water that all our people and economies rely on. The challenge that we are just beginning to recognise and act upon is one of transitioning to a more sustainable economy - one that values the role of a healthy Amazonia in underpinning long-term security and prosperity.”...

A NASA image of the Amazon River near Manaus. You can see Fitzcarraldo!

Nitrogen deposition poses a threat to the diversity of Europe's forest vegetation

A press release from the Finnish Environment Institute: Unless nitrogen emissions are curbed, the diversity of plant communities in Europe's forests will decrease. Atmospheric nitrogen deposition has already changed the number and richness of forest floor vegetation species in European forests over the last 20–30 years. In particular, the coverage of plant species adapted to nutrient-poor conditions has reduced. However, levels of nitrogen deposition in Finnish forests remain small compared to Southern and Central Europe.

These results will be presented as part of international research published in the journal Global Change Biology. Researchers from the Finnish Environment Institute and the Finnish Forest Research Institute (Metla) participated in this research, which concludes that unless nitrogen emissions are curbed, the diversity of plant communities in Europe's forests will decrease. The work involved the examination of long-term changes in vascular plant communities within a 1 300 monitoring grid covering 28 forested areas in various parts of Europe.

The number and richness of forest floor vegetation species in European forests have changed over the last 20 to 30 years, due to wet and dry deposition of atmospheric nitrogen. In particular, low-nutrient or acidic habitats are sensitive to long-term nitrogen deposition. Among such habitats, coverage of species such as heather and may lily has been reduced in many areas, in which nitrogen deposition has exceeded a certain threshold value i.e. the critical nitrogen load.

The largest changes in vegetation have occur red in Southern and Central European forests. Although deposition has not yet markedly affected species numbers within plant communities, most new species spreading into forests during the monitoring period have been types that favour nitrogen.

...Although nitrogen deposition remains small in Northern Europe, even a slight rise in long-term deposition could change the competitive relationship of vascular plants by promoting the dissemination and growth of nitrogen-favouring species....

Species found in nutrient-poor habitats, such as heather, lingonberry, crowberry and lichens in particular are sensitive to nitrogen deposition. Photo Hannu Nousiainen, Metla.

Antarctic fjords are climate-sensitive hotspots of diversity in a rapidly warming region

EurekAlert via University of Hawaii at Manoa: Deep inside the dramatic subpolar fjords of Antarctica, researchers from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa have discovered an unexpected abundance and diversity at the seafloor. During a recent expedition, UH scientists for the first time studied the seafloor communities of glacier dominated fjords along the west Antarctic Peninsula, a region undergoing very rapid climate warming.

The scientists expected to find impoverished seafloor communities highly disturbed by glacial sedimentation, similar to those that have been documented in well-studied Arctic regions. To their surprise, bristle worms, anemones, sea spiders, and amphipod crustaceans abounded in their seafloor photographs, along with a number of sea cucumbers, deep ocean jellyfish and other species. Above the seafloor, the fjord waters were dense with krill.

Scientists suggest that the differences in diversity and abundance between Arctic and Antarctic fjords can be explained by the fact that the subpolar Antarctic is in an earlier stage of climate warming than the Arctic, allowing the Antarctic fjords to sustain high levels of productivity. The Antarctic fjords show little disturbance from glacial melting.

"Our study area along the Antarctic Peninsula is warming as fast as anywhere in the world, and the amazing ecosystems there are changing very quickly," said Craig Smith, a professor of oceanography at UH Mānoa who has been studying how marine ecosystems in the Antarctic are responding to climate warming.

"There appears to be something special about these fjords that stimulates seafloor productivity," said Laura Grange, a researcher at the National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton, United Kingdom, who was a postdoctoral collaborator at UH Mānoa with Smith during this study....

View toward the NNE from Rothera Research Station (on Adelaide Island) over Laubeuf Fjord. At the centre is Webb Island. On the left are some ice cliffs from the Wormald Ice Piedmont (also on Adelaide Island). The distant mountain behind the ice piedmont is probably the Mount St. Louis Massif (1280 m) on Arrowsmith Peninsula on the Antarctic mainland, 53 km from Rothera. The somewhat darker mountains on the right are on Wyatt Island in Laubeuf Fjord. Shot by Vincent van Zeijst, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Island biodiversity in danger of total submersion with climate change

Pensoft Publishers: Sea level rise caused by global warming can prove extremely destructive to island habitats, which hold about 20% of the world's biodiversity. Research by C. Bellard, C. Leclerc and F. Courchamp of the University of Paris Sud look at 3 possible scenarios, from optimistic to very pessimistic, to bring attention to the dangers in store for some of the richest biodiversity hotspots worldwide. The study was published in the open access journal Nature Conservation.

Despite climate change having received considerable attention in recent years, no global assessment of the consequences of sea rising is available for island ecosystems. Yet those are amongst the regions most vulnerable to potential sea level rise, which in their case would cause a direct reduction of habitat.

Several recent studies strongly suggest that sea levels will rise substantially until the end of the century, with estimates ranging from 0.5 m to 2.3 m increase. Worst case scenarios of ice sheet melting and sliding lead to estimates of sea-level rise of the worrying 4 to 6 m. Such increases could lead to the immersion of very large proportions of many islands with low elevation. In many cases, sea level rise may lead to their total submersion, wiping out completely self-contained ecosystems and their inhabitants .

The study uses the 1,269 islands from different areas that France harbored, out of which, New Caledonia and French Polynesia are found to be the most vulnerable to sea level rise. The French maritime domain is ranked as the second most important in the world, these islands in total holding a large proportion of the world's biodiversity. Research shows that 5% of the number of islands could be permanently inundated under an increase of sea level by 1 meter. This figure dramatically rises to 8% and 11%, in the more pessimistic scenarios, respectively, for 2 and 3 meters of sea level rise. Assuming that French islands are representative of worldwide islands, roughly 10,800 islands could be entirely lost in the 1 meter scenario, the most optimistic one.

For the New Caledonia hotspot, under the worst scenario, up to 6.8 % of the islands could be half submerged. Speaking in terms of biodiversity loss, this indicates endemic plant species that are already at risk of extinction will be the most vulnerable to sea level rise.

"Losses of insular habitats will thus be relatively important in the future, probably leading to a major impoverishment of insular biodiversity. Given the implications of these results, decision makers are required to define island conservation priorities that accounts for sea level rise following climate change."comments the lead author Dr. C. Bellard.

Image of New Caledonia by René Moutouh, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licens

Government's biodiversity offsetting proposals 'too simplistic'

Leigh Stringer in edie.net:  [The UK g]overnment proposals to introduce a system of 'biodiversity offsetting' must be improved to properly protect Britain's wildlife and woodlands, according to the Environmental Audit Committee.  In September, the Government set out proposals for biodiversity offsetting in a Green Paper consultation, Biodiversity Offsetting in England.

The Green Paper envisages the development of 'habitat banking', where an offset provider would restore or recreate habitats in anticipation that they would be able to sell the offset units at a later date.  Although the new system could enhance the way the planning system accounts for the damage done to valuable natural habitats, there is a risk of giving developers "carte blanche to concrete over important habitats," according to the Environmental Audit Committee report on the proposals.

Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, Joan Walley MP, said there is a danger that an overly simplistic offsetting system would not protect long-established eco-systems, such as ancient woodland and Sites of Special Scientific Interest.  The Government's Green Paper does not provide an evidence based analysis of how offsetting would deliver "biodiversity gain", according to the MPs.

A major concern highlighted by the Committee is the twenty minute assessment for calculating biodiversity losses at a site, proposed by Ministers, which it also labels "overly simplistic".  According to the committee, it should include particular species, local habitat significance, ecosystem services provided - such as pollination and flood prevention - and 'ecosystem network' connectivity to reflect the full complexity of habitats....

Whitelee forest. New wind turbines and forest clearing machine, a Ponsse harvester. Shot by Scott, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

GM agriculture is not the answer to seed diversity – it's part of the problem

Teresa Anderson of the Gaia Foundation in the "poverty matters" blog at the Guardian (UK): For thousands of years, farmers across the globe have skilfully observed, saved and bred a wealth of seed diversity, cultivating ever more crop varieties to deal with the challenges of farming. The need to save, exchange and pass seed on is so important to farming that it is embedded into cultural practices around the world to ensure future generations can have the seed diversity and complex farming knowledge they need to continue to grow food and develop crops.

But recent decades have seen a dramatic decrease in global seed diversity, for the first time in history. Since the introduction of the so-called Green Revolution of the 1960s, alongside laws that restrict farmers' rights ... to save and exchange seed, agribusiness corporations have steadily increased sales of hybrid and GM crops. Genetic diversity and farmers' knowledge are the basis of farming; but as corporate seed and chemicals increasingly replace farmers' own ingenuity, they are now seen as mere customers. What was once agriculture is increasingly becoming agribusiness.

...Farmers today and in the future will need to grow a wide diversity of crop varieties to spread their risk and deal with variable amounts of rain, changing temperatures, saline conditions, emerging pests and diseases, as well as a diversity of nutritional and medicinal needs. Imagine each seed variety taking millions of dollars and many years before corporations bring it to market, where it would need to be planted in huge monocultures to recoup the enormous investment. The inevitable outcome of this vision will be the disappearance of global crop diversity, while farmers struggle to access the seed that they – and the communities they feed – urgently need.

It is time for us to recognise that corporate and GM agriculture is part of the problem, and cannot be part of the solution. Instead, we need policies and practices that actively support the revival of seed diversity and seed-saving knowledge in farmers' hands, and that ensure this is passed on to the generations to come....

USDA photo of some barley

Urgent new time frame for climate change

EurekAlert via the University of Hawaii at Manoa: Ecological and societal disruptions by modern climate change are critically determined by the time frame over which climates shift. Camilo Mora and colleagues in the College of Social Sciences' Department of Geography at the University of Hawaii, Manoa have developed one such time frame. The study, entitled "The projected timing of climate departure from recent variability," will be published in the October 10 issue of Nature and provides an index of the year when the mean climate of any given location on Earth will shift continuously outside the most extreme records experienced in the past 150 years.

The new index shows a surprising result. Areas in the tropics are projected to experience unprecedented climates first – within the next decade. Under a business-as-usual scenario, the index shows the average location on Earth will experience a radically different climate by 2047. Under an alternate scenario with greenhouse gas emissions stabilization, the global mean climate departure will be 2069.

"The results shocked us. Regardless of the scenario, changes will be coming soon," said lead author Camilo Mora. "Within my generation, whatever climate we were used to will be a thing of the past."

...The study found that the overarching global effect of climate change on biodiversity will occur not only as a result of the largest absolute changes at the poles, but also, perhaps more urgently, from small but rapid changes in the tropics.

...Rapid change will tamper with the functioning of Earth's biological systems, forcing species to either move in an attempt to track suitable climates, stay and try to adapt to the new climate, or go extinct. "This work demonstrates that we are pushing the ecosystems of the world out of the environment in which they evolved into wholly new conditions that they may not be able to cope with. Extinctions are likely to result," said Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Global Ecology, and who was not involved in this study. "Some ecosystems may be able to adapt, but for others, such as coral reefs, complete loss of not only individual species but their entire integrity is likely."...

Based on the cited public-domain source: The graph shows the average of a set of temperature simulations for the 20th century (black line), followed by projected temperatures for the 21st century based on a range of emissions scenarios (colored lines). The shaded areas around each line indicate the statistical spread (one standard deviation) provided by individual model runs. The net impacts of human actions and choices on future greenhouse gas concentrations are fed into models as different “scenarios.” For example, the scenario represented by the blue trend line above (IPCC Scenario B1) assumes that humans worldwide will make more sustainable development choices by using a greater range of, and more efficient, technologies for producing energy.

Rich biodiversity CAN exist in and around cities

A press release from the Stockholm Resilience Center: Increasing urbanization over the next decades presents not only unprecedented challenges for humanity, but also opportunities to curb climate change, reduce water scarcity and improve food security, according to the world's first global assessment on the relationship between urbanization and biodiversity loss.

The assessment, entitled Cities and Biodiversity Outlook (CBO), argues that cities should facilitate for a rich biodiversity and take stewardship of crucial ecosystem services rather than being sources of large ecological footprints.

The volume of research is produced by Stockholm Resilience Centre together with the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), in partnership with UN-Habitat and ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability.

The detailed scientific foundation of the CBO, Urbanization, Biodiversity and Ecosystem services: Challenges and Opportunities — A Global Assessment, which was launched 4 October 2013 in New York as part of local celebrations to mark World Habitat Day, has involved more than 200 scientists worldwide.

It states that over 60 percent of the land projected to become urban by 2030 has yet to be built. It further states that if current trends continue, 70 percent of the global urban population will be urban by 2050. This presents a major opportunity to greatly improve global sustainability by promoting low-carbon, resource-efficient urban development that can reduce adverse effects on biodiversity and improve quality of life, it says....

The garden of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, shot by João Pimentel Ferreira, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license