APS123 Edwards Flashcards
What is palm oil used in?
Food, pharmaceuticals, biofuels
From 1999-2008 there was been a … increase in oil palm area
56%
From 2001 to 2011 there was a …Mha expansion in oil palm area
5.5
There has been most severe deforestation for oil palm in..
South-East Asia (e.g. indonesia)
Most deforestation for oil palm has been at the expense of….
primary and selectively logged tropical forest
There is a predicted future demand for …. of oil palm
over 60 million tonnes
Science shows that forest conversion to oil palm … carbon
releases
Replacing dry dipterocarp forest with oil palm:
-163t/ha
Replacing peatswamp forest with oil palm:
-1450t/ha
Peatswamps are often … to clear space for oil palm
burned - huge destruction, lots of CO2, lots of smoke, poor air quality
- Haze from indonesian fires may have killed more than 100,000 people
Biofuels save burning fossil fuels, but ….
oil palm expansion destroys forest
It would take … years to replace the effects of cutting down dry dipterocarp forest with the effects of using palm oil biofuel
75-90
It would take … years to replace the effects of cutting down dry peatswamp forest with the effects of using palm oil biofuel
600
Science shows that replacing natural tropical forests with oil palm causes a dramatic fall in …
biodiversity
–> key driver of global extinction crisis
It is important to not only conserve species for what they are but…
what they do - species play functional roles in ecosystems that are important to conserve
… diversity is a key way of assessing ecosystem functioning
Functional
Functional diversity (FD)…
quantifies the range and abundance of functional roles played by species within a community
e. g.
- food type
- body size
- foraging strategy
- bill shape (look at vangas)
Functional richness is…
the volume of functional trait space occupied by a set of species
FD/FRic =
ecosystem services (ES) - the provision of a natural resource or process that is valued by humankind (e.g. carbon storage, water)
Protection of ecosystem function is positively related to…
protection of ecosystem services
There is a positive correlation between plant biomass and…
functional diversity
With oil palm (instead of primary or intensively logged forest), functional diversity…
DRAMATICALLY decreases (by over 90% in birds, by over 98% in dung beetles)
With deforestation for oil palm comes big trait losses and small trait gains. In birds there is an increase in… loss of … and arrival of …
In dung beetles there is an absence of …, decreased … and increased …
granivorous species, bark gleaners, water-related species
rollers, diet generalist species, smaller species
Fewer … … exist in oil palm
trait combinations
There is no impact of … …, or … … forest on yield
forest extent, distance to
Spill over of biodiversity from forest has net … effect on yield
neutral
Retention of forest must be for … rather than … …
conservation, yield benefits
A species climate niche can be defined as…
the specific range of climatic requirements that enables a species to survive and reproduce
We want to understand species climate niches across the Earth and how they may change. To do this we can create a…
bioclimate envelope model (BEM)
There are … main steps in the process of creating a BEM
five
The first BEM step is…
collecting records of locations
- from museum collections (detailed labels)
- from records from wildlife enthusiasts
- from research datasets
- from fieldwork to (possible) locations
The second BEM step is…
mapping current species distribution
- plot known records on a map
The third BEM step is…
using distribution to infer environmental requirements
- overlay maps of environmental features with distribution map - topography (altitude), soil type, rainfall, temperature
- cross-reference distribution with environmental layers
The fourth BEM step is…
predicting a species distribution from its environmental requirements
- statistical modelling to simulate where a species is also likely to occur
- based upon accurate environmental measures from step 3
The fifth BEM step is…
using BEM to predict future distributions under changing climates
- statistical models to predict where a species will live under changed climatic conditions
Bioclimate envelope models allow…
- you to define species’ climatic niches
- you to simulate species’ distributions under present and future climates
Understanding species climate requirements is important when thinking about…
- Food production
- Human diseases
- Species extinctions
Climate is responsible for more severe…
weather events (e.g. droughts and floods) - farmed species have climatic requirements too
What may be required of corn farming in the USA?
- developing heat-tolerant strains to 32.5C
- or move corn farms north
Climate change is responsible for ……….. conditions in more northerly areas. … and … may track their climate envelopes.
warmer and wetter,
Vectors (e.g. mosquitos), diseases (e.g. dengue)
… of australian flying foxes can die off in some populations following…
a single day of exposure to extreme temperatures
Thomas et al (2004) predicted that..
for 2050, 15-37% of species (in sample regions and taxa) will be ‘committed to extinction’
Adapting to climate change will require…
physiological variability in thermal tolerances of species
What 3 questions are important when considering whether species will be able to adapt to climate change?
- Does such physiological variability exist and where?
- Are species adapting to climate change via heritable, genetic changes?
- Can the rate of evolutionary adaptation match the rate of climate change?
Bird species from more varied climates have…
broader physiological limits (broader thermal tolerances).
- Species in climatically stable tropics are mot at risk
Mammal species from varied climates…
do not have broader thermal tolerances.
Tropical species may be particularly…
vulnerable to climate change
What is phenology?
"the timing of seasonal activities of animals and plants" Includes the timing of: - Arrival of migrants - Appearance (butterflies, buds) - Breeding
How do we determine whether phenology has changed?
We need to compare across decades of data
- Natural historians (notes/collections)
- Monitoring surveys
We need to control for confounding variables
- i.e., is it really climate change driven?
Over 57 years, UK laying date is related to…
temperature or rainfall for 31 of 36 bird species
Anomalies of phenological phases in Germany correlate with…
mean spring air temperature and winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)
Phenology strongly matches…
climate
How has warming impacted phenology?
- altered date of arrival of migrants
- altered first and duration of appearance
- altered first breeding
Mean arrival and departure of 20 migrant bird species have…
advanced by 8 days
What are the benefits of this change in phenology?
- Exploitation of favourable climates earlier in the year
- Early access to best nest sites and abundant food (–> improved survival of young)
- Potential to make more breeding attempts
What are the costs of this change in phenology?
- Sudden bad weather (kills adults or young)
- temporal mismatch with food (phenology shifts in species, but not necessarily its food)
Are species shifting their distribution? We need to compare…
past distributions with current distributions and see whether they have changed by moving to higher latitudes or altitudes?
When looking at 35 non-migratory species of butterfly, … have shifted northwards by 35-240km. Only … shifted south
65%,
3%
In Indonesian mountains, … moth species moved upwards by an average of … between 1965 and 2007
102,
67
Temperature and … may combine to create different predicted patterns - predictions may be too simplistic
precipitation
In Australia, if you focus only on poleward shifts, you would underestimate shifts in climate niches by … in temperate species and … in tropic species
26%,
95%
Observed rate of movements in many species…
do not match those predicted/expected - especially for elevation
Why might range shifts not be as rapid?
- Species simply can’t move quickly enough?
- Data used in predictions are too coarse scale?
- Temperature grid cells at 1 x 1 km or larger
- but is this the scale at which species operate (think about how small insects are, for example)
What is a microhabitat?
Fine-scale (cm to m) features within a habitat, e.g. epiphytic ferns, tree holes, leaf litter.
- they can act as thermal buffers
- allowing species to survive under harsh conditions, e.g. extreme climate events
In forests, the further you go up…
the warmer it gets (different to mountains)
In frogs there was less… with decreasing…
arboreality, elevation
- consistent amongst and within species
