Natural Refuges to End Extinction Due to Climate Change
David Radomski
Topic: Climate Change and Extinction
Lead-in: The dark cloud of climate change has been over our heads for so long. There are so many damages that result from climate change, including extinction. However, there may be something from the past that can help us put a stop to extinction caused by climate change.
General Background: Climate change greatly disrupts habitats in which these species live in. For example, the polar bear needs a cold climate with ice and snow, but an increase in temperature causes the ice to melt. Also, climate change effects how food sources grow. If there are no food sources for animals, then they will die from starvation.
Study Description: In the past, some species were able to avoid extinction amidst negative climate conditions. They did this by going to wildlife refuges called refugia. This is an area that had microclimates, which means that there were many different climates all in one area (Suggit, et al. 2018). These areas also tended to be freer of the negative conditions caused by global warming. The scientist wanted to find out if these natural refuges would buffer the adverse effects from modern climate change. The scientist used over 5 million records of 430 different species from the years 1970 to 2009. These records showcased the population size of these species in different areas of England (Suggit, et al. 2018).
Findings: The scientist found that the areas within England that were not considered refugia areas had a much greater population loss than areas that were considered refugia areas. Most of the areas considered to be refugia had insignificant loses in species, if any (Suggit, et al. 2018). This confirms that these refugia areas work the same way they did in the past during other extinction periods. They can buffer the effects of climate change just like they did in the past. This shows that the climate change issue of today is very similar to the climate change issues of the past. Nature is still able to save species from extinction due to climate the same way today as it did in the past.
Future directions: This research is a good step towards understanding climate change. In future studies you can take this idea of looking back into the past to compare how nature was able to recover from all of the obstacles from climate change to extinction. This study shows that nature is working the same way that it did in the past to preserve itself. We should try to find other ways in which nature has healed itself in the past and how we can use this in the present. Today we have the technology to do some very beneficial things, and we should use these resources to recreate what nature is doing to heal itself. We have made climate change get out of hand, and therefore we can’t just rely on nature to fix it. We must assist this natural process of healing the Earth. The only difference between the global change problems of the past and the ones of the present time is that we humans have worsened them in the present. Therefore, the only difference between how the problems were solved in the past versus the present is that we must help solve them now.
References: Suggitt A., Wilson, R. and Isaac, N. 2018. Extinction risk from climate change is reduced by microclimatic buffering. Nature Climate Change, 8: 713–717.
