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Ecosystem change

36 important questions on Ecosystem change

What are ecosystem services?

- Provisioning
- Cultural
- Supporting services

What are tropical forest

- Warm-adapted systems that are generally more sensitive to droughts than to warming

Drought sensitivity influences the distribution of tropical forest trees even in areas with high rainfall

Which factors influence forest diversity and why?

- Drought and length of dry season
- They are intimately connected to climate

What happens with mega drought in Amazon?

- Favored burning and resulted in large amount of carbon being released in the atmosphere

What happens if climate change alters the hydrologic cycle?

Increased rainfall in some areas + increased drought in others
- Tropical forest are very sensitive to droughts -> high risk

What does Barro Colorade Island (BCI)?

Provides insights into possible ecological effects of tropical forest drought

What is the impact of drought?

- It has major effects on forest composition
- moisture-demanding species became less common + species with higher drought tolerance filled space

What are tropical cloud forests impacted by?

The lifting cloud base effect

What is the lifiting cloud base effect?

Sea surface temperature warms -> moisture formation will occur at higher elevations -> cloud bases will rise -> the point at which montane forests intersect cloud upslope moves
- The net effect will be a shift in suitable climatic conditions for cloud forests toward the tops of the mountains

What happens if sea surface temperature increases in the region?

Number of dry days per year has mounted -> precipitation has decreased -> stream flows have fallen

What means a lowered relative humidity at altitude?

Clouds will form higher -> reducing the area of intersection with mountains -> decreasing the extent of cloud forest -> loss of someof the endemic species

What do birds during the drying period?

Birds typical of low elevations have shifted upslope

What happens with range shits with warming?

- Shifts upslope + disappearance of upper elevation species

What happend in the temperate ecosystems?

In many areas, more than 80% of all mature trees are killed, resulting in massive changes in light penetration, carbon storage and canopy cover

What is the thing with the Lodgepole pin?

Seeds must be released by fire, so large areas are dominated with few other species. All trees are the same age

What are the changes in climate?

- More forest fire activity -> early snowmelt
- Warming accelerates snowmelt -> drier, more flammable forsts later in the year
- Large fires -> open large areas to ecological succession -> accelerate species range shits

What happens with high elevation Pine species?

- They have shorter more abundant needles
- They enjoy long, cold season's that limit damage from bark beetles
- Warming is bringing beetle outbreak damage to these pines

What happens with the Whitebark pine seeds?

- They are dispersed by Clark's nutcrackers, this is the only animal with the ability to get within the pine's dense and heavily pitch-laden cones
- Grizzly bears feed on the seeds -> critical resource for bear reproduction
- Squirrels and other animals feed on the caches as well

What is the impact of Whitebark pin trapt at upper elevations?

- They trap snow -> this impacts hydrologic regimes of all downslope ecoystems
- The needles reduce wind velocity
- The shade op the canopies reduces evaporation from ice phase of snow -> retaining more water for spring melt

What means the loss of the Pine over large areas?

Less runoff and less late runoff for downstream systems
- A lot of death -> lower streamflows -> less recruitment of trout

Which trees do beetles not attack?

Immature trees -> They prefer trees > 80 whereas trees begin reproducing at age 60

What happens with the cryosphere due to climate change?

- Tropical glaciers are disappearing all over the world
- They lose more mass to melting than they accumulate from snowpack each year

What are the physical consequences?

- Exposure of land that was first covered by ice
- Flow increases in rivers
- Large losses in river flow in the longer term when the glaciers have disappeared

What are the biological consequences?

- Loss of flow and warming water temperatures
- As glaciers lose their mass -> cold water flows are reduced
- Lower water levels -> reduced habitat for freshwater species
- Reduced flow -> warmer water -> reduced habitat for cold water species

What is the result of snowmelt and eralier melt?

This will result in less streamflow in summer dry period

What are seal lairs?

- Made of snow instead of ice, so more hunting by polars bears on the cubs

What happens when the sea ice extents?

- Ice retreats away from the continental shelf -> the polar bears have to return to land earlier in the year + diving species have to dive deeper to obtain food

What happens when coral dies?

They may be replaced by algae or other noncorals -> changes in the food web -> species dependent on coral are replaced by speceis that feed on algae

What happens when bleaching is local?

Transformation results in mixed assemblage of coral and algae associated species

How is fishing harvest affected?

- Coral associated fish are replaced rapidly by algae associated fish and coral fishes are more valuable

What happens with pelgaic marine systems?

- Warm water allows phytoplankton and zooplankton to expand their range nordward
- This results in a booming mackerel population and catch
- The combination of climate change and fishing pressure results in simultaneous top-down and bottom-up changes in fisheries that may be difficult to tease apart

How are direct chemical effects of the oceans occurring?

- Due to a result of the massive amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere
- CO2 dissolves in water to form carbonic acid -> CO2 is in equilibirium with carbonic acid in seawater
- The CO2 that is converted to carbonic acid releases hydrogen atoms into seawater -> higher PH

Where deoes feedback to climate change occur?

- Where the balance of greenhouse gases produced by an ecosystem is altered by climate
- Where change in vegetation changes the albedo

What is the feedback with plants?

- Plant respiration is higher with increasing temperatures, releasing more CO2
- Plant growth also increases with temperature, making the balance between carbon fixed in plants and that respired important in determining the net effect of warming

What is the feedback system in Amazon?

- evapotranspiration in one part of the basin provided rainfall in the next
- Should the amazon dry to eliminate forst in some areas, the reduction in moisture recycling would lead to forest drying and loss in adjacent areas
- When these forests are gone, the CO2 released from decaying vegetation is very high

What is the feedback system in the Tundra?

- Tundra has a high albedo
- Conifer has a low albedo
- Conifers are expanding and replacing tundra
- Decrease in snow cover will make these lands darker, so absorb more solar light -> further warming of the climate

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The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

Climate Change Ecology

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