Climate Change and Biodiversity

Fall, 2008 

Graduate-level seminar (Geog 607): Fridays 12:00-3:00, 207 Condon.

Dan Gavin (dgavin@uoregon.edu)
Office: 110 Condon Hall; Phone: 346-5787

Overview:  Biodiversity is a measure of the number and abundance of species or genes in a region.  Threats to biodiversity include habitat loss, exploitation, invasive species, and a potentially large impact by climate change.  Some assessments have forecast an impending mass extinction, up to 10 times the current rate, which is already much greater than that revealed by the fossil record.  The goal of this seminar will be to read and discuss up-to-date high-impact scientific literature on this topic.  To get to this point, we will spend the first four meetings on the basic concepts related to biodiversity (for example, controls of species distributions, disturbance ecology, ecological communities, and historical processes).  We will then read several recent major assessments of global and local biodiversity, as well as introductions to ecosystem models used to make forecasts of ecosystems under a changed climate.  We will use the last two meetings to read the recent literature that takes on this task of forecasting.  Discussion-leader responsibilities will rotate among students through the term. 

This course will not cover ecological theories regarding the origin and maintenance of biodiversity or the composition of ecological communities, or the gradient in biodiversity from the equator to poles.  We will only touch upon genetic or evolutionary responses to climate change.

The major project for this seminar is to write a report with the focus of understanding the relationship between climate change and biodiversity for a specific region.  The paper should cover this relationship with respect to existing threats to biodiversity.  It will also need to include perspectives from paleo-studies and from models that forecast future change.

 A preliminary list of readings:

• Thompson, R. & Starzomski, B.M. (2007) What does biodiversity actually do? A review for managers and policy makers. Biodiversity and Conservation, 16, 1359-1378.
• Pimm, S.L., Russell, G.J., Gittleman, J.L., & Brooks, T.M. (1995) The Future of Biodiversity. Science, 269, 347-350.
• The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/index.aspx
• Global Environmental Outlook, United Nations Environment Programme:
  
• Botkin, D.B., Saxe, H., Araujo, M.B., Betts, R., Bradshaw, R.H.W., Cedhagen, T., Chesson, P., Dawson, T.P., Etterson, J.R., Faith, D.P., Ferrier, S., Guisan, A., Hansen, A.S., Hilbert, D.W., Loehle, C., Margules, C., New, M., Sobel, M.J., & Stockwell, D.R.B. (2007) Forecasting the effects of global warming on biodiversity. Bioscience, 57, 227-236.
• Gaston, K.J. & Fuller, R.A. (2007) Biodiversity and extinction: losing the common and the widespread. Progress in Physical Geography, 31, 213-225.
• Lenihan, J.M., Bachelet, D., Neilson, R.P., & Drapek, R. (2008) Response of vegetation distribution, ecosystem productivity, and fire to climate change scenarios for California. Climatic Change, 87, S215-S230.
  

Department of Geography, University of Oregon
Modified May 12th, 2008