[MCN] To stay alive, wild nature must run away from home

[Lance Olsen]

1989

“Forests, many of them economically productive, could begin to die off as early as 2000 if they prove unable to adjust to rapidly shifting climate zones.”

David Wirth. Climate Chaos. Foreign Policy no.74 (1989): 3-22. 
https://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/lsfp/975/

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2006

“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, Camille. Ecological and Evolutionary Responses to Recent Climate Change. 
The Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics  2006. 37: pp. 637–69.

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2006

"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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2007

“Climate has long been identified as a primary control on the geographic distribution of plants (Forman 1964, Box 1981). Therefore, plant species may be expected to exhibit marked redistributions in response to climate change." 

"…. In addition, species are expected to be redistributed independently, forming new forest types with unique species combinations (Webb 1992, Williams et al. 2004).”

McKenney et al. Potential Impacts of Climate Change on the Distribution of North American Trees. 
Bioscience  2007

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2011

“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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2012

“Localized ecological systems are known to shift abruptly and irreversibly from one state to another when they are forced across critical thresholds. 

Here we review evidence that the global ecosystem as a whole can react in the same way and is approaching a planetary-scale critical transition as a result of human influence."

Barnovsky et al. Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere. Nature Volume 486, 07 June 2012

doi:10.1038/nature11018

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2013

“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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2015

Forest Ecology and Management Accepted 7 October 2015
Review and synthesis
Achievable future conditions as a framework for guiding forest conservation and management
S.W. Golladay, K.L. Martin, J.M. Vose, D.N. Wear, A.P. Covich, R.J. Hobbs, K.D. Klepzig, G.E. Likens, R.J. Naiman, A.W. Shearer 

Abstract

We contend that traditional approaches to forest conservation and management will be inadequate given the predicted scale of social-economic and biophysical changes in the 21st century. New approaches, focused on anticipating and guiding ecological responses to change, are urgently needed to ensure the full value of forest ecosystem services for future generations. These approaches acknowledge that change is inevitable and sometimes irreversible, and that maintenance of ecosystem services depends in part on novel ecosystems, i.e., species combinations with no analog in the past.”(Golladay et al 2016).

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2017

“...the ability of natural ecosystems to deliver ecosystem services is being challenged by the largest climate-driven global redistribution of species since the Last Glacial Maximum.”

“Human society has yet to appreciate the implications of unprecedented species redistribution for life on Earth ….Even if greenhouse gas emissions stopped today, the responses required in human systems to adapt to the most serious effects of climate-driven species redistribution would be massive.”
 
Pecl et al. 2017. Biodiversity redistribution under climate change: Impacts on ecosystems and human well-being. Science. 31 March 2017

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2020

A 2020 report from the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers reports that …. “Over the next several decades, the climate in Canadian forests will shift northward at a rate that will likely exceed the ability of individual tree species to migrate. While most tree species can migrate naturally up to a few hundred metres per year via seed dispersal, the climatic conditions in which each species thrives may move north by several thousand metres per year.”

The Globe and Mail JANUARY 23, 2023
Preparing for ‘Firmageddon,’ researchers watch B.C.’s forests for die-offs and droughts
JUSTINE HUNTER

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