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State of the Wild: PERSPECTIVE OF A CLIMATOLOGIST
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“Animals are on the run. Plants are migrating too.”1 I wrote those words in 2006 to draw attention to the fact that climate change was already under way. People do not notice climate change because it is masked by day-to-day weather fluctuations, and we reside in comfortable homes. Animals and plants, on the other hand, can survive only within certain climatic conditions, which are now changing. The National Arbor Day Foundation had to redraw its maps for the zones in which tree species can survive, and animals are shifting to new habitats as well. Are these gradual changes in the wild consistent with dramatic scientific assessments of a crystallizing planetary emergency? Unfortunately, yes. Present examples only hint at the scale of the planetary emergency that climate studies reveal with increasing clarity.
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State summaries: 2022 legislation passed to build wildlife crossings
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Numerous states have passed legislation in 2022 to take advantage of new, historic federal funding for wildlife crossing structures.
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News & Events
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Stationarity Is Dead: Whither Water Management?
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Climate change undermines a basic assumption
that historically has facilitated management of
water supplies, demands, and risks.
SCIENCE VOL 319
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Statistically derived contributions of diverse human influences to twentieth-century temperature changes
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The warming of the climate system is unequivocal as evidenced by an increase in global temperatures by 0.8 ◦ C over the past century. However, the attribution of the observed warming to human activities remains less clear, particularly because of the apparent slow-down in warming since the late 1990s. Here we analyse radiative forcing and temperature time series with state-of-the-art statistical methods to address this question without climate model simulations. We show that long-term trends in total radiative forcing and temperatures have largely been determined by atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, and modulated by other radiative factors. We identify a pronounced increase in the growth rates of both temperatures and radiative forcing around 1960, which marks the onset of sustained global warming. Our analyses also reveal a contribution of human interventions to two periods when global warming slowed down. Our statistical analysis suggests that the reduction in the emissions of ozone-depleting substances under the Montreal Protocol, as well as a reduction in methane emissions, contributed to the lower rate of warming since the 1990s. Furthermore, we identify a contribution from the two world wars and the Great Depression to the documented cooling in the mid-twentieth century, through lower carbon dioxide emissions. We conclude that reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are effective in slowing the rate of warming in the short term.
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Staton et al 2000.pdf
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SPA-STE
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Status
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Status
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SE FireMap project status updates.
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Status and Ecological Effects of the World’s Largest Carnivores
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The largest terrestrial species in the order Carnivora are wide-ranging and rare
because of their positions at the top of food webs. They are some of the world’s most admired mammals
and, ironically, some of the most imperiled. Most have experienced substantial population
declines and range contractions throughout the world during the past two centuries. Because of the
high metabolic demands that come with endothermy and large body size, these carnivores often
require large prey and expansive habitats. These food requirements and wide-ranging behavior
often bring them into confl ict with humans and livestock. This, in addition to human intolerance,
renders them vulnerable to extinction. Large carnivores face enormous threats that have caused
massive declines in their populations and geographic ranges, including habitat loss and degradation,
persecution, utilization, and depletion of prey. We highlight how these threats can affect the
conservation status and ecological roles of this planet’s 31 largest carnivores.
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Stauffer 1990.pdf
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Stearns 1883.pdf
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SPA-STE
