How Has Climate Change Impacted Ecosystems?
This post will go through climate change and ecosystems for Prelim Biology.
Topic: Future Ecosystems
- The role of changing climate on ecosystems
What is Climate Change?
Climate change refers to ‘a change in the pattern of weather, and related changes in oceans, land surfaces and ice sheets, occurring over time scales of decades or longer’ (Australian Academy of Science, 2020). This video goes through climate change in a little more depth.
This video goes through the relationship between climate change and biodiversity.
Animals and Climate Change
Unlike humans, most wildlife do not have air conditioners or heaters that can keep them in the optimum temperature range. So with the increasingly volatile weather, melting glaciers and inhospitable conditions due to humans (i.e. habitat destruction), many animals just aren’t able to adapt. Recall that adaptations take place over millions of years, relative to this, the rate of change of climate is too drastic for most species to readily adapt.
This video goes through the question about animals adapting to climate change.
This is an interesting video about fossils and climate change.
