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How Climate Change Affects Biodiversity

Dina Orlando-D'Amelio

Hallie Vardeman

John Winstead

Jessi Sherrod

Aquatic dead zones often occur near high human population density.

Increasing oceanic dead zones

  • The past half-century has seen an explosive growth in aquatic dead zones, areas too low in dissolved oxygen to support life
  • Fertilizer and sewage run-off cause huge growth of plankton. However, these then quickly die and are consumed by bacteria that deplete waters of oxygen.
  • For example, the Gulf of Mexico has a 22,000 square kilometer dead zone every spring due to run-off from the Mississippi River

Coral reefs threatened by climate change

  • Benefits of Coral reefs: protects shores from the impact of waves, provides benefits to humans in the form of food and medicine, and provides economic benefits to local communities from tourism
  • More than 30 billion annually in global good and services such as coastline protection, tourism and food
  • As coral reefs die off they will take with them one-third of the worlds marine biodiversity. Then there is a domino effect, as reefs fail so will other ecosystems. This is the path of a mass extinction event, when most life, especially tropical marine life, goes extinct

Increasing ocean stratification

  • The Arctic, Antarctic and high latitudes have had the highest rates of warming, and this trend is projected to continue
  • In terms of ice free summers there has been loss of an entire biome in the Arctic Ocean
  • Not only does climate change affect Polar bears but also the rest of the food chain including invertebrates, birds, fish, and marine mammals
  • "Less sea ice leads to changes in seawater temperature and salinity, leading to changes in primary productivity and species composition of plankton and fish, as well as large-scale changes in ocean circulation, affecting biodiversity well beyond the Arctic."

Climate Change Impacts On Biodiversity In The Arctic

  • As climate change warms the oceans, the warmer water tends to stay on top of what is then a layer of colder water.
  • It's affecting phytoplankton which provide half of the oxygen that we breathe and help eliminate surface CO2, and ultimately support all of our fisheries

Tiny phytoplankton: the foundation of the oceanic food chain

Coral bleaching results in white, dead-looking, coral. Healthy coral is very colorful and rich with marine life.

Works Cited

"Climate Change Affects Biodiversity." - Global Issues. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Apr. 2014. <http://www.globalissues.org/article/172/climate-change-affects-biodiversity#Lizardsthreatenedbyclimatechange>.

"Climate Science Glossary." Skeptical Science. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Apr. 2014. <http://www.skepticalscience.com/Infographic-on-where-global-warming-is-going.html>.

"Coral Reefs." - Global Issues. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2014. <http://www.globalissues.org/article/173/coral-reefs>.

"It's Not Climate Change, It's Ocean Change!" Climate Shifts. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Apr. 2014. <http://www.climateshifts.org/?p=5585>.

  • The ice in the Arctic does thaw and refreeze each year, but it is that pattern which has changed a lot in recent years as shown by this graph
  • The extent of floating sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, as measured at its annual minimum in September, showed a steady decline between 1980 and 2009

Climate change means ocean change

  • Greenhouse gas emissions are rapidly changing the physical properties and key biological process in the ocean
  • We all call this man-made catastrophe "global warming", but "ocean warming"is more descriptive of what is happening
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