Saving a Million Species: Extinction Risk from Climate Change - Softcover

Hannah, Lee; Lovejoy, Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1597265705 ISBN 13: 9781597265706

Verlag: Island Press, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

The research paper "Extinction Risk from Climate Change" published in the journal Nature in January 2004 created front-page headlines around the world. The notion that climate change could drive more than a million species to extinction captured both the popular imagination and the attention of policy-makers, and provoked an unprecedented round of scientific critique.
 
Saving a Million Species reconsiders the central question of that paper: How many species may perish as a result of climate change and associated threats? Leaders from a range of disciplines synthesize the literature, refine the original estimates, and elaborate the conservation and policy implications.
The book:

• examines the initial extinction risk estimates of the original paper, subsequent critiques, and the media and policy impact of this unique study
• presents evidence of extinctions from climate change from different time frames in the past
• explores extinctions documented in the contemporary record
• sets forth new risk estimates for future climate change
• considers the conservation and policy implications of the estimates.

Saving a Million Species offers a clear explanation of the science behind the headline-grabbing estimates for conservationists, researchers, teachers, students, and policy-makers. It is a critical resource for helping those working to conserve biodiversity take on the rapidly advancing and evolving global stressor of climate change-the most important issue in conservation biology today, and the one for which we are least prepared.

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Edited by Lee Hannah

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Saving a Million Species

Extinction Risk From Climate Change

By Lee Hannah

ISLAND PRESS

Copyright © 2012 Island Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-59726-570-6

Contents

Title Page, 
Copyright Page, 
FOREWORD, 
PART I - Introduction, 
Chapter 1 - Are a Million Species at Risk?, 
Chapter 2 - First Estimates of Extinction Risk from Climate Change, 
Chapter 3 - Climate Change, Extinction Risk, and Public Policy, 
PART II - Refining First Estimates, 
Chapter 4 - Refining Risk Estimates Using Models, 
Chapter 5 - The Use and Misuse of Species-Area Relationships in Predicting Climate-Driven Extinction, 
PART III - Current Extinctions, 
Chapter 6 - First Extinctions on Land, 
Chapter 7 - Global Warming and Widespread Coral Mortality: Evidence of First Coral Reef Extinctions, 
Chapter 8 - Extinction Risk at High Latitudes, 
PART IV - Evidence from the Past, 
Chapter 9 - Extinctions in Deep Time, 
Chapter 10 - Terrestrial Ecosystem Response to Climate Change during the Paleogene, 
Chapter 11 - Quaternary Extinctions and Their Link to Climate Change, 
Chapter 12 - Quaternary Tropical Plant Extinction: A Paleoecological Perspective from the Neotropics, 
PART V - Predicting Future Extinctions, 
Chapter 13 - Every Species Is an Insect (or Nearly So): On Insects, Climate Change, Extinction, and the Biological Unknown, 
Chapter 14 - Extinction Risk from Climate Change in Tropical Forests, 
Chapter 15 - Coral Reefs, Climate Change, and Mass Extinction, 
Chapter 16 - Extinction Risk in a Changing Ocean, 
Chapter 17 - Climate Change and Freshwater Fauna Extinction Risk, 
Chapter 18 - Climate Change Impacts on Species Interactions: Assessing the Threat of Cascading Extinctions, 
PART VI - Conservation Implications, 
Chapter 19 - Strategies for Reducing Extinction Risk under a Changing Climate, 
Chapter 20 - Saving a Million Species, 
CONTRIBUTORS, 
INDEX, 

CHAPTER 1

Are a Million Species at Risk?

LEE HANNAH

The research paper "Extinction Risk from Climate Change" created front-page headlines around the world when it appeared as the cover story of Nature in January 2004 (Thomas et al., 2004). The notion that climate change could drive more than a million species to extinction captured popular imagination and the attention of policy makers. The story was covered by CNN, ABC News, NBC News, NPR, and major newspapers and magazines in Europe and the United States and was the subject of debate in the House of Commons and in the US Senate.

An unprecedented round of scientific critique quickly followed the huge popular interest in the story. Nature itself published three articles challenging fundamental points of the paper (Harte et al., 2004; Buckley and Roughgarden, 2004; Thuiller et al., 2004), while publications refining or debating the underlying science continue to appear in top research journals. This welter of publications makes for a diverse literature not easily synthesized or accessed, despite the critical policy implications of the research. Most important, the variety of critiques leaves unresolved the major question: What is the extinction risk associated with climate change, and how many species may perish?

Saving a Million Species addresses this important question by synthesizing the literature, by having leaders in the field refine the original estimates of extinction risk, and by drawing on these authors to elaborate the science, conservation, and policy implications of this research in an accessible format.

This book will speak to conservationists, researchers, teachers, undergraduate to graduate students, and policy makers interested in a clear explanation of the science behind the headline-grabbing estimates. Unpacking the research behind the headlines reveals complex chains of causation, with many taxa facing unique challenges. These stories reveal connections among climate change and many other alterations to the natural world, from rain forest destruction to overfishing. The chapters of the book are organized into six parts, each bringing to bear the insights of a relevant discipline. This multiplicity of perspectives breaks down the monolithic large numbers and reveals the complexity of the problem. It allows solutions to begin to take shape.

The six sections explore evidence from the past and present, estimates of future risk from modeling and taxonomic perspectives, and finally the conservation and policy implications. The chapters in part I introduce the original research and its critiques. Part II examines the research published since the 2004 article to refine estimation techniques. Part III explores extinctions documented in the contemporary record—the first of the extinctions due to human-induced climate change. Part IV examines extinctions from past natural climate change. New risk estimates from modeling of future climate change are presented in part V. The sixth and final section addresses the conservation and policy implications of the estimates: What does extinction risk imply for the future of biodiversity and global cooperation on action to curtail climate change?

Science behind the Hype

The saga of extinction risk from climate change began in London in 2002. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) called a meeting of international climate change experts there to discuss the threat posed by climate change. The IUCN is a membership organization representing conservation groups from government agencies to nonprofit organizations. They assess and determine the global list of species threatened with extinction. IUCN officers were concerned about the threat climate change posed but didn't know what to do about it. They called in international researchers for advice.

The researchers at the IUCN meeting found a remarkable thing. They all were engaged in modeling of changes in species ranges in different parts of the world—locations as different as Australia and the Amazon. But all were finding high numbers of species losing suitable range, even in relatively mild midcentury (2050) scenarios. And all were finding significant numbers of species losing all of their suitable habitat. Climate change might be a much more serious threat to species' survival than anyone had previously imagined.

But they needed some way to compare their diverse results. The key question was how to estimate extinctions from models of shrinking range size. Chris Thomas, then of the University of Leeds (now at the University of York), had an idea. What if you used the well established species-area relationship (SAR) to estimate extinctions from range-size models? The SAR had previously been used to estimate extinctions based on decreasing forest size. Why not disaggregate that relationship and apply it to range loss in individual species? There were several ways to do that, and it turned out they all showed high levels of extinction risk— almost always in double digits, some estimates as high as 30 or 40 percent.

The London group agreed that these were important results and coalesced behind the leadership of Thomas to produce a research paper describing the results. Thomas had a strong track record with Nature, the most well respected journal in the field, so the manuscript was submitted there. After some hard review questions and revisions, Nature accepted the paper and scheduled it for publication in early 2004. Thomas developed a press release describing the research, in which he...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Island Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2011
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1597265705
• ISBN 13: 9781597265706
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 417
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland