A new study suggests policy shifts regarding climate change could prevent huge losses of wildlife and other damage to an important ecosystem in the Western Hemisphere.
Scientists looked at two scenarios on dealing with greenhouse gases.
“One that's fairly pessimistic and that not much is done, often called the ‘business as usual’ scenario. And the other one, which is more optimistic, would be where there is considerable mitigation and control of greenhouse gases and climate change through 2100,” said Jeff Brawn, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois.
He and David Luther, an associate professor at George Mason University were the lead authors of the study published in the journal Global Change Biology.
The study looked at prospects for birds in a region stretching from central Mexico south to the tip of South America that’s known for its diversity of wildlife.
The researchers chose birds to represent the biodiversity, because they’ve been studied extensively.
“There’s just a lot of information on birds in terms of their distributions, where they are and how many. So, they were a useful case history to talk about what the impacts of different climate scenarios would be on biodiversity because we know quite a bit about them,” Brawn explained.
Groups such as the National Audubon Society and researchers such as Cornell Lab of Ornithology are some of the major players in bird studies worldwide, and particularly in the tropical regions of the Western Hemisphere, giving scientists a lot of data to use.
The study argues that maintaining tropical ecosystems is “critical to the conservation of global biodiversity, carbon storage, and the survival of local peoples.”
But the impacts of unchecked climate change would be widespread. Changes would not be limited to the region studied, called the neotropics.
Besides abundant and diverse bird, mammal, insect, fish, amphibian, and reptile species, the region produces a lot of soybeans, corn, and a lot of cattle. Under the pessimistic or ‘business as usual’ scenario, there could be disruption in the food supplies.
“If those ecological systems get compromised, we're going to lose a lot. Now, whether you should care about that or not, it's up to your values. But I think it's going to make a big difference in what the world will look like in 100 years.”
Brawn and Luther noted that effects of damage to the Amazon lowland forests, which are habitat for 30% of all species on the planet, also store a huge amount of carbon. Any fraction that would be lost would exacerbate global climate change further.
