Climate Change: Biodiversity and Conservation

Maintaining the integrity of ocean ecosystems and managing their use in the face of rapid and inevitable global change is one of the greatest challenges of this century.  Changes in temperature, sea level, and ocean chemistry will have enormous implications for marine biodiversity and ecosystem function, and for human exploitation of marine resources, human migration, and national security.

Climate Change

Marine ecosystems are continually subject to oscillations in climatic conditions, but the rates of change over the next several centuries are likely to exceed any since the last deglaciation 8000-10,000 years ago. Human-produced CO2 has resulted in a total anthropogenic increase in air temperature.  Greenhouse effects are partly offset by pollutant aerosols in the atmosphere, so it is likely that as efforts are made to reduce atmospheric pollution, global warming will be magnified. Climate models predict that increased average global temperature will strengthen the hydrologic cycle resulting in more intense droughts and rainfall and stronger tropical storms. Modern hot temperature extremes are also expected to become commonplace by the year 2050.

Research
Richard Norris: the past changes in pelagic ecosystems
Jeremy Jackson:  historical ecological analyses of marine ecosystem changes over the past several centuries and degradation of modern coral reefs along gradients of human disturbance. 
Naomi Oreskes: history of scientific and political awareness of global change
Jay Barlow & Lisa Ballance:  Biological effects of regime shifts in the oceanic tropics

Sea Level Rise

Sea level rise is expected to have major impacts on human societies in the coming centuries. Marine and terrestrial ecosystems are likely to be strongly affected by flooding of coastal wetlands, flooding of atolls and low-lying islands, and changes in exposure of coastal areas to storm surge and saltwater intrusion.  While there is significant uncertainty about the rapidty of future sea level rise, even moderate increases may affect distribution of intertidal habitat, san supply to beaches, persistence of coastal wetlands, coastal flooding and rates of coastal erosion.

Reearch
Lisa Levin: march and bay marine ecosystem processes and larval dispersal
Jeremy Jackson: historical changes in estuarine and reef ecosystems
Wolf Berger:  climate and biological implications of sea level change

Naomi Oreskes is a professor of history and an affiliate of the Program in Science Studies at UCSD. She studies the historical development of scientific knowledge, methods and practices in the earth and environmental sciences. Oreskes' most recent work deals with the science of climate change. Her 2004 essay "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change," which is referenced in "An Inconvenient Truth," led to op-ed pieces in The Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle, and has been widely cited, including in The New Yorker, USA Today and the Royal Society's publication, "A Guide to Facts and Fictions About Climate Change." Her recent testimony to the United States Senate on the history of climate science may be accessed at http://epw.senate.gov/epwmultimedia/epw120606.ram.