Thomas, C.D., Cameron, A., Green, R.E., Bakkenes, M., Beaumont, L.J., Collingham, Y.C., Erasmus, B.F.N., Ferreira de Siqueira, M., Grainger, A., Hannah, L., Hughes, L., Huntley, B., van Jaarsveld, A.S., Midgley, G.F., Miles, L., Ortega-Huerta, M.A., Townsend Peterson, A., Phillips, O.L. and Williams, S.E. (2004) Extinction risk from climate change. Nature, 427 (6970). pp. 145-148. ISSN 0028-0836Full text available as:
Available under licence : See the attached licence file.
Climate change over the past 30 years has produced numerous shifts in the distributions and abundances of species and has been implicated in one species-level extinction. Using projections of species' distributions for future climate scenarios, we assess extinction risks for sample regions that cover some 20% of the Earth's terrestrial surface. Exploring three approaches in which the estimated probability of extinction shows a power-law relationship with geographical range size, we predict, on the basis of mid-range climate-warming scenarios for 2050, that 15–37% of species in our sample of regions and taxa will be 'committed to extinction'. When the average of the three methods and two dispersal scenarios is taken, minimal climate-warming scenarios produce lower projections of species committed to extinction (18%) than mid-range (24%) and maximum-change (35%) scenarios. These estimates show the importance of rapid implementation of technologies to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and strategies for carbon sequestration.
|Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:||© 2004 Nature Publishing Group|
|Institution:||The University of Leeds|
|Academic Units:||The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds)
The University of Leeds > University of Leeds Research Centres and Institutes > Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation (Leeds)
|Depositing User:||Repository Officer|
|Date Deposited:||20 Sep 2004|
|Last Modified:||04 Jun 2014 08:38|
Actions (login required)