Climate change predicted to destroy 80% of world’s rainforests by 2100
August 9th, 2010 by Jim JustScientists predict in a new study that fewer than one in five of the plants and animals which currently live in the world’s rainforests will still be here in 90 years time. The culprits? Climate change and deforestation.
The study, “Correlative and mechanistic models of species distribution provide congruent forecasts under climate change”, is published in the June edition of Conservation Letters, an open-access journal. Here’s the abstract:
Good forecasts of climate change impacts on extinction risks are critical for effective conservation management responses. Species distribution models (SDMs) are central to extinction risk analyses. The reliability of predictions of SDMs has been questioned because models often lack a mechanistic underpinning and rely on assumptions that are untenable under climate change. We show how integrating predictions from fundamentally different modeling strategies produces robust forecasts of climate change impacts on habitat and population parameters. We illustrate the principle by applying mechanistic (Niche Mapper) and correlative (Maxent, Bioclim) SDMs to predict current and future distributions and fertility of an Australian gliding possum. The two approaches make congruent, accurate predictions of current distribution and similar, dire predictions about the impact of a warming scenario, supporting previous correlative-only predictions for similar species. We argue that convergent lines of independent evidence provide a robust basis for predicting and managing extinctions risks under climate change.
By 2100, climate change and deforestation could have altered two-thirds of the rainforests in Central and South America and about 70% in Africa. The Amazon Basin alone could see changes in biodiversity for 80% of the region.
A U.K. Telegraph article about the study quotes Daniel Nepstad, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center, which studies climate change in Massachusetts:
This study is the strongest evidence yet that the world’s natural ecosystems will undergo profound changes including severe alterations in their species composition through the combined influence of climate change and land use. Conservation of the world’s biota, as we know it, will depend upon rapid, steep declines in greenhouse gas emissions.