Photo from Millennium Ark
Postponed from March 13:
Dr. Chris Thomas, professor of biology at the University of York (UK), discusses climate change and extinction risk, including a discussion of species and population responses to degraded and fragmented landscapes. During the show, we talk about overall global extinction rate trends, how climate change combines with existing environmental problems (e.g. habitat loss), the challenges facing climate change research, which species are most at risk, and why people should care even if they don’t care about biodiversity. (!)
As Thomas’ research group reports, “We estimated that 15-37% of species may be committed to eventual extinction as a result of climate warming that is likely to have taken place (mid-range estimates) by 2050. We have also found out that species with fragmented distributions tend to be in the process of declining, allowing us to deduce changes to the status of species even when we lack detailed historical records.”
Listen right now:
