Category: Climate change

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Climate change will cause more than extinction

A comment in Conservation Biology this month ((D.K. Skelly et al. (2007) Evolutionary Responses to Climate Change. Conservation Biology 21 (5), 1353–1355. doi:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2007.00764.x)) criticizes a recent paper in the same journal ((J.R. Malcolm (2006) Global Warming and Extinctions of Endemic Species from Biodiversity Hotspots. Conservation Biology 20 (2), 538–548. doi:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2006.00364.x)) which estimated that up to 43% of the endemic biota in some biodiversity hotspots could go extinct as a result of global climate change.

While not disputing that climate change will cause extinctions, the authors of the comment suggest that the climate envelope approach to predicting range changes ((That’s the same kind of approach that’s been used by our friend Andy Jarvis and others to predict dire consequences for the wild relatives of the peanut, potato and cowpea.)) ignores the possibility that species may in fact evolve in response to changes in the climate. And they quote evidence that such genetic change is happening.

Continue reading “Climate change will cause more than extinction”

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Rice, China and climate change

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The map shows rice yield in China by county for 1996 ((Thanks to Robert Hijmans, IRRI.)). The pattern it shows has changed significantly in the past 20 years, and will probably change more in the next 20. Climate change will drive that to some extent, of course. But not just climate change. Robert Hijmans, a geographer at IRRI, has a nice feature in Rice Today discussing the “relocation of rice production in China.”

Remember Jeremy has an omnibus post about Chinese agrobiodiversity.

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Animal diseases reviewed

Thanks to Danny Hunter for pointing to two recent posts at CABI’s blog, one on bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease to you and me), the other on bluetongue disease. BSE seems to be running its course and to be more or less under control, even though many mysteries still surround it. Bluetongue, however, is altogether more menacing, because it seems to have reached Britain at least partly as a result of climate change, which has allowed the midges that spread the virus to expand their range. This could be the start of something big. I don’t believe there is any resistance associated with different breeds of cattle, but I could be wrong.

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Down on the levee

A riverine trifecta today, describing threats to the biodiversity — including agrobiodiversity — associated with major rivers around the world…

From Italy, news that students and teachers from the University of Gastronomic Sciences at Pollenzo (founded in 2004 by Slow Food guru Carlo Petrini) — over 150 of them —  will travel down the Po River watershed by bicycle and boat in September and October. They’ll be giving the river and its valley a source-to-delta checkup, they say, diagnosing their ills but also identifying their abiding strengths — ecological, cultural and, presumably, agricultural.

Further east, Hubert von Goisern, an Austrian musician, has done something similar — but in his own way — for the Danube. He’s spent the summer giving a series of concerts down the river for a WWF campaign to raise awareness of the damage that planned development projects will do to the habitat of the Danube sturgeon. Plans to straighten and deepen the course of the river to facilitate shipping are expected to affect a thousand-kilometer stretch, destroying a unique natural and cultural heritage.

And further east still, Nguyen Huu Chgiem, the son of a Mekong delta rice farmer, reflects on how climate change, deforestation and saltwater intrusion are affecting Vietnam’s “rice basket.” And what he can do about it now that he’s a professor of environment and natural resources management.