How does global warming affect biodiversity
Answers
Answer:
These climate change impacts are in part due to how we have altered land use. Turning natural areas into cities or agricultural fields not only diminishes biodiversity, but can make warming worse by chopping down trees and plants that help cool the planet.
Answer:
Extinction is a hotly debated, but poorly understood topic in science. The same goes for climate change
When scientists try to forecast the impact of global change on future biodiversity levels, the results are contentious, to say the least.
While some argue that species have managed to survive worse climate change in the past and that current threats to biodiversity are overstated, many biologists say the impacts of climate change and resulting shifts in rainfall, temperature, sea levels, ecosystem composition, and food availability will have significant effects on global species richness.
The impact of global warming on biodiversity extinction
Extinction is a hotly debated, but poorly understood topic in science. The same goes for climate change. When scientists try to forecast the impact of global change on future biodiversity levels, the results are contentious, to say the least.
While some argue that species have managed to survive worse climate change in the past and that current threats to biodiversity are overstated, many biologists say the impacts of climate change and resulting shifts in rainfall, temperature, sea levels, ecosystem composition, and food availability will have significant effects on global species richness.
Lessons from historic extinctions
There is little doubt that climate has played a critical role in past fluctuations of biodiversity levels. Among the five recognized mass extinction events — the Ordovician, the Devonian, the Permian, the Triassic and the Cretaceous — at least four are believed to have some correlation to climate change.
Peter Ward, a paleontologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, says there is evidence that most mass extinctions were caused by gradual climate change. Specifically he cites the Triassic and Permian extinctions of 200 million and 251 million years ago, respectively.