Saving a Million Species Extinction Risk from Climate Change

About this book

The research paper Extinction Risk from Climate Change published in the journal Nature in January 2004 created front-page headlines around the world. The notion that climate change could drive more than a million species to extinction captured both the popular imagination and the attention of policymakers, and provoked an unprecedented round of scientific critique. Saving a Million Species reconsiders the central question of that paper: How many species may perish as a result of climate change and associated threats? Leaders from a range of disciplines synthesize the literature, refine the original estimates, and elaborate the conservation and policy implications.

This book examines the initial extinction risk estimates of the original paper, subsequent critiques, and the media and policy impact of this unique study. It presents evidence of extinctions from climate change from different time frames in the past. It explores extinctions documented in the contemporary record. It sets forth new risk estimates for future climate change. It considers the conservation and policy implications of the estimates. Saving a Million Species offers a clear explanation of the science behind the headline-grabbing estimates for conservationists, researchers, teachers, students, and policymakers. It is a critical resource for helping those working to conserve biodiversity takes on the rapidly advancing and evolving global stressor of climate change – the most important issue in conservation biology today, and the one for which we are least prepared.

Contents

Foreword by Thomas E. Lovejoy

PART I. INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1. Are a Million Species at Risk?
Chapter 2. First Estimates of Extinction Risk from Climate Change
Chapter 3. Climate Change, Extinction Risk, and Public Policy

PART II. REFINING FIRST ESTIMATES
Chapter 4. Refining Risk Estimates Using Models
Chapter 5. The Use and Misuse of Species-Area Relationships in Predicting Climate-Driven Extinction

PART III. CURRENT EXTINCTIONS
Chapter 6. First Extinctions on Land
Chapter 7. Global Warming and Widespread Coral Mortality: Evidence of First Coral Reef Extinctions
Chapter 8. Extinction Risk at High Latitudes

PART IV. EVIDENCE FROM THE PAST
Chapter 9. Extinctions in Deep Time
Chapter 10. Terrestrial Ecosystem Response to Climate Change during the Paleogene
Chapter 11. Quaternary Extinctions and Their Link to Climate Change
Chapter 12. Quaternary Tropical Plant Extinction: A Paleoecological Perspective from the Neotropics

PART V. PREDICTING FUTURE EXTINCTIONS
Chapter 13. Every Species Is an Insect (or Nearly So): On Insects, Climate Change, Extinction, and the Biological Unknown
Chapter 14. Extinction Risk from Climate Change in Tropical Forests
Chapter 15. Coral Reefs, Climate Change, and Mass Extinction
Chapter 16. Extinction Risk in a Changing Ocean
Chapter 17. Climate Change and Freshwater Fauna Extinction Risk
Chapter 18. Climate Change Impacts on Species Interactions: Assessing the Threat of Cascading Extinctions

PART VI. CONSERVATION IMPLICATIONS
Chapter 19. Strategies for Reducing Extinction Risk under a Changing Climate
Chapter 20. Saving a Million Species

Contributors
Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

Lee Hannah is Senior Researcher in Climate Change Biology at Conservation International and adjunct professor in the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara.