Tag: Climate change

Community-level assisted migration for climate-appropriate prairie restoration

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Author: McKone, Mark J.; Hernandez, Daniel L. Description: Climate change threatens the long-term survival of highly fragmented habitats such as North American tallgrass prairie. De novo plantings into former agricultural sites can contribute to efforts to conserve prairie biodiversity, but past planting practice (including our own) has focused on the use of local species and genotypes. Climate change makes this “local-only” practice obsolete because of rapidly shifting species’ ranges. We propose that new prairie plantings incorporate assisted migration at the community level; all species and genotypes that are viable in…

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Estimating the capacity of Chamaecrista fasciculata for adaptation to change in precipitation

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Author: Peschel, AR; Boehm, EL; Shaw, RG Description: Adaptation through natural selection may be the only means by which small and fragmented plant populations will persist through present day environmental change. A population’s additive genetic variance for fitness (V(A) (W)) represents its immediate capacity to adapt to the environment in which it exists. We evaluated this property for a population of the annual legume Chamaecrista fasciculata through a quantitative genetic experiment in the tallgrass prairie region of the Midwestern United States, where changing climate is predicted to include more variability…

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Energy insecurity: a framework for understanding energy, the built environment, and health among vulnerable populations in the context of climate change

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Author: Hernandez, D Description: The recent occurrence of Hurricane Sandy and other climate change-related calamities prompt us to consider the significance of public health in the aftermath of disaster. However, the field of public health also has a role to play in the awareness, preparedness, and deterrence of environmental factors that affect vulnerable populations on a daily basis. The growing incidence of extreme weather events attributable to climate change and the parallel surge in energy prices trickle down to formidable health impacts that may prove especially detrimental to vulnerable populations….

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Climate Change, Pollution, Deforestation, and Mental Health: Research Trends, Gaps, and Ethical Considerations

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Author: Wigand, ME; Timmermann, C; Scherp, A; Becker, T; Steger, F Description: Climate change, pollution, and deforestation have a negative impact on global mental health. There is an environmental justice dimension to this challenge as wealthy people and high-income countries are major contributors to climate change and pollution, while poor people and low-income countries are heavily affected by the consequences. Using state-of-the art data mining, we analyzed and visualized the global research landscape on mental health, climate change, pollution and deforestation over a 15-year period. Metadata of papers were exported…

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Insect decline in the Anthropocene: Death by a thousand cuts

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Author: Wagner, David L.; Grames, Eliza M.; Forister, Matthew L.; Berenbaum, May R.; Stopak, David Description: Nature is under siege. In the last 10,000 y the human population has grown from 1 million to 7.8 billion. Much of Earth’s arable lands are already in agriculture, millions of acres of tropical forest are cleared each year, atmospheric CO2 levels are at their highest concentrations in more than 3 million y, and climates are erratically and steadily changing from pole to pole, triggering unprecedented droughts, fires, and floods across continents. Indeed, most…

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Vertebrates on the brink as indicators of biological annihilation and the sixth mass extinction

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Author: Ceballos, Gerardo; Ehrlich, Paul R.; Raven, Peter H. Description: The ongoing sixth mass species extinction is the result of the destruction of component populations leading to eventual extirpation of entire species. Populations and species extinctions have severe implications for society through the degradation of ecosystem services. Here we assess the extinction crisis from a different perspective. We examine 29,400 species of terrestrial vertebrates, and determine which are on the brink of extinction because they have fewer than 1,000 individuals. There are 515 species on the brink (1.7% of the…

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The projected timing of abrupt ecological disruption from climate change

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Author: Trisos, Christopher H.; Merow, Cory; Pigot, Alex L. Description: As anthropogenic climate change continues the risks to biodiversity will increase over time, with future projections indicating that a potentially catastrophic loss of global biodiversity is on the horizon. However, our understanding of when and how abruptly this climate-driven disruption of biodiversity will occur is limited because biodiversity forecasts typically focus on individual snapshots of the future. Here we use annual projections (from 1850 to 2100) of temperature and precipitation across the ranges of more than 30,000 marine and terrestrial…

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Global mercury cycle

A review of global environmental mercury processes in response to human and natural perturbations: Changes of emissions, climate, and land use

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Author: Obrist, Daniel; Kirk, Jane L.; Zhang, Lei; Sunderland, Elsie M.; Jiskra, Martin; Selin, Noelle E. Description: We review recent progress in our understanding of the global cycling of mercury (Hg), including best estimates of Hg concentrations and pool sizes in major environmental compartments and exchange processes within and between these reservoirs. Recent advances include the availability of new global datasets covering areas of the world where environmental Hg data were previously lacking; integration of these data into global and regional models is continually improving estimates of global Hg cycling….

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The twenty-first century Colorado River hot drought and implications for the future

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Author: Udall, Bradley; Overpeck, Jonathan Description: Between 2000 and 2014, annual Colorado River flows averaged 19% below the 1906-1999 average, the worst 15-year drought on record. At least one-sixth to one-half (average at one-third) of this loss is due to unprecedented temperatures (0.9°C above the 1906-1999 average), confirming model-based analysis that continued warming will likely further reduce flows. Whereas it is virtually certain that warming will continue with additional emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, there has been no observed trend toward greater precipitation in the Colorado Basin, nor…

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The state of the bats in North America

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Author: Adams, Amanda M.; Trujillo, Luis A.; Campbell, C. J.; Akre, Karin L.; Arroyo-Cabrales, Joaquin; Burns, Leanne; Coleman, Jeremy T. H.; Dixon, Rita D.; Francis, Charles M.; Gamba-Rios, Melquisedec; Kuczynska, Vona; McIntire, Angie; Medelli­n, Rodrigo A.; Morris, Katrina M.; Ortega, Jorge; Reichard, Jonathan D.; Reichert, Brian; Segers, Jordi L.; Whitby, Michael D.; Frick, Winifred F. Description: The world’s rich diversity of bats supports healthy ecosystems and important ecosystem services. Maintaining healthy biological systems requires prompt identification of threats to biodiversity and immediate action to protect species, which for wide-ranging bat…

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