L6 Pfeifer - Conservation Challenges

Question 1

What are the 2 primary components of climate change that affect the spatial distribution of biomes on earth?

Answer 1

1. temperature

2. precipitation

Question 2

At a regional level what just climate is important, what 2 other factors could effect the distribution of biomes?

Answer 2

Topography and Soil attributes and disturbance

Question 3

Ecosystem boundaries can be blurry or sharp, what is meant by this?

Answer 3

blurry - slowly merging from one ecosystem to another - mangroves

sharp - clear cut defined change - cliffs of dover

Question 4

How do you define an ecosystems boundaries?

Answer 4

1. lay quadrats
2. look at and compare the communities found in these
3. visualise community vs distance
4. rate of change
5. peaks and troughs

Question 5

In a spatial scale and ecological process, what are extent and grain?

Answer 5

extent - overall area encompassed by the study

grain - size of each individual unit of observation (resolution/how fine the grid is)

Question 6

What are the draw backs to research gained at:

a) small spatial scale
b) large spatial scale

Answer 6

a) research gained at small spatial scale are not often representative of larger areas
b) large areas may be meaning less at smaller scales

Question 7

What are the 3 types of scale?

Answer 7

1. Temporal
   - climate
   - temperature
   - daylight
2. spatial
   - different forest types
   - different processes in different structure and microclimates
3. ecological
   - ecosystem types

Question 8

How do forests effect biogeography?

Answer 8

Forests store 45% of terrestrial carbon

Forests can store large amounts of carbon annually - 33% of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel and land use in 1999

Question 9

What is the REDD organisation and what do they do?

Answer 9

• the more you reduce your emissions the more you get paid

- should debt be cancelled by credits before resuming payments

Question 10

What is meant by the tipping point of an ecosystem?

Answer 10

When an ecosystem pass a critical point, their shift from one system to another becomes inevitable

• may be irreversible
• may be warning signs for it
• shift may be to a system with reduced function compared to before

Question 11

How do forests affect biogeophysics?

Answer 11

Low surface albedo contributes to warming through increased solar heating of the land

evapotranspiration cools the climate through feedbacks with clouds an precipitation

high rates of evapotranspiration, this decreases the surface air temperature and increases the precipitation compared to pasture land

Question 12

What kind of climate does the conversion of forest to pastureland create?

Answer 12

Creates a warmer drier climate as forests maintain a high rate of evapotranspiration, which decreases the surface air temperature and increases precipitation compared to pastureland

Question 13

State 6 relationships between poverty and environmental degradation

Answer 13

These cause environmental degradation:

1. exogenous
2. endogenous
3. power wealth and greed
4. market failure
5. institutional failure

But also:
6. environmental degradation causes poverty

Question 14

What is the relationship between capita GDP (total output of a country that takes the gross domestic product (GDP) divided it by the no. of people) and per capita per capita demand?

Answer 14

Analysis reveal a simple and temporally consistent global relationship, between capita GDP and per capita demand for crop calories and protein