The Press Stories
It is very difficult to keep track of all the effects of global warming not only on climate but also on the planet’s biodiversity, but our ever-increasing focus is not on destruction (not yet, at least), but mass migration.
Very hot water. These are tropical sea creatures that live on the planet’s warmest waters, and in recent decades have frequently abandoned them in search of milder climates to move to higher latitudes. A March study was published PNAS Recently this trend was confirmed and now the authors have also published a part Conversation It summarizes the results of their work and warns against the long-term consequences of this “exchange” of biodiversity.
For decades, the diversity of the equator has been declining in favor of higher latitudes.
© Anthony Richardson
This is a very brief summary of the study: More and more tropical species are moving toward the poles because the water in which they live has become too hot for their survival. As you can see in the chart above, this trend is evident over the last 60 years: the size of marine life around the equator has been declining for decades and growing at higher latitudes.
In search of new. The same team that conducted the study had already predicted a similar trend Five years ago, Now field observations have confirmed their suspicions: most biodiversity oceans are moving north and south, leaving the equatorial belt (relatively) populated.
According to the research team, this is not the first time this type of mass migration has occurred on our planet. About 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian, an increase of about 10 செல் C caused tropical creatures to find refreshment in cold water: as a result 90% of the planet’s marine life became extinct. This is because the arrival of new creatures always involves disrupting the ecological balance: new predators enter the cup chain, and the risk of invasive species altering the local population, in the most extreme cases, up to the general deterioration of the ecosystem.
Tuna’s escape. Summarize that in some cases humans can also create problems for us: the simplest example is tuna, whose fishing depends entirely on the community, which can suddenly find themselves without their main source of livelihood, which has escaped further north in search of new. As for the solutions to this problem, there is one important innovation: 41 countries came together Global Ocean Alliance, Which aims to transform 30% of the oceans into protected areas by 2030 (currently 2.7%).
