[MCN] A mini-anthology for env. studies, biology, wildlife, forestry, climate change

[Lance Olsen]

The Redistribution of Life on Earth: A mini-anthology

Lance Olsen

 

“Climate change is not a new topic in biology...... Observations of range shifts in parallel with climate change ... date back to the mid-1700s.”

“This review  …  deals exclusively with observed responses of wild biological species and systems.”

 “A surprising result is the high proportion of species responding to recent, relatively mild climate change (global average warming of 0.6 C).”

Parmesan. Ecological and Evolutionary Responses to Recent Climate Change. The Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 2006

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"Conservationists must therefore assess both current and future distributions of species.”

 Araújo and Rahbek. How does climate change affect biodiversity? Science 2006.

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“Using a meta-analysis, we estimated that the distributions of species have recently shifted to higher elevations at a median rate of 11.0 meters per decade, and to higher latitudes at a median rate of 16.9 kilometers per decade. These rates are approximately two and three times faster than previously reported” 

Chen et al. Rapid Range Shifts of Species Associated with High Levels of Climate Warming. Science 2011

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“Collectively, the results foreshadow twenty-first-century changes in forest structures and compositions …. towards distributions unfamiliar to modern civilization.”

Williams et al. Temperature as a potent driver of regional forest drought stress and tree mortality. Nature Climate Change 2012

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“The rate of warming implies …  range shifts of up to several kilometers per year, raising the prospect of daunting challenges for ecosystems …”

Diffenbaugh and Field. Changes in Ecologically Critical Terrestrial Climate Conditions. Science. 2013

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“ …  when all other variables were held constant, animals living in regions that exhibited low vegetation greenness (i.e. mean annual NDVI c. 0.06) had a predicted migration distance of 206 km and animals in regions with relatively high vegetation greenness (i.e. mean annual NDVI c. 0.80) had a predicted migration distance roughly one-tenth as large.”

Teitelbaum et al. How far to go? Determinants of migration distance in land mammals. Ecology Letters. 2015

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 “Human society has yet to appreciate the implications of unprecedented species redistribution for life on Earth, including for human lives.”

Pecl et al. Biodiversity redistribution under climate change: Impacts on ecosystems and human well-being. Science 2017
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“What can be said with assurance is that there is a unique and nearly ubiquitous compound, with the empirical formula H(2960)O(1480)C(1480)N(16)P(1.8)S called living matter. Its synthesis, on an oxidized and uncarboxylated earth, is the most intricate feat of chemical engineering ever performed – and the most delicate operation that people have ever tampered with.”

Edward S. Deevey, Jr.  Mineral Cycles.  Scientific American, September 1970
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