Science Study: 1 In 6 Plant And Animal Species Now Face Extinction; Rate Will Accelerate
Climate change could drive to extinction as many as one in six animal and plant species, according to a new analysis. In a study published Thursday in the journal Science, Mark Urban, an ecologist at the University of Connecticut, also found that as the planet warms in the future, species will disappear at an accelerating rate.
“We have the choice,” he said in an interview. “The world can decide where on that curve they want the future Earth to be.” As dire as Dr. Urban’s conclusions are, other experts said the real toll may turn out to be even worse. The number of extinctions “may well be two to three times higher,” said John J. Wiens, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona. Global warming has raised the planet’s average surface temperature about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the Industrial Revolution. Species are responding by shifting their ranges.
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Dr. Wiens also noted that the tropics have been underrepresented in climate extinction studies. In Dr. Urban’s meta-analysis, 78 studies focused on species in North America and Europe, while only seven came from South America. Yet when Dr. Urban combined all the data from South American studies, he found that 23 percent of species were at risk of extinction. In North America, by contrast, only 5 percent faced extinction. What makes this imbalance all the more glaring, Dr. Wiens said, is the fact that most of the planet’s species live in tropical forests such as the Amazon. If climate extinction research took tropical diversity into account, the planet’s overall risk would be much higher.
Dr. Urban acknowledged that his meta-analysis is far from the final word. “This is a summary of the best information we have right now,” he said. As predictions improve, Dr. Urban said, they will allow conservation biologists to pinpoint the species at greatest risk of extinction and help plan strategies to save them.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/science/new-estimates-for-extinctions-global-warming-could-cause.html?_r=0