Author Archives: Rolf Schuttenhelm

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 17: These 6 killers still bigger drivers than warming – IUCN study

An analysis of IUCN’s Red List of endangered species places 10 drivers of the Holocene-Anthropocene Mass Extinction in order of severity. It concludes that classical environmental threats like deforestation, hunting and overfishing – in 2016 – still top the list … Continue reading →

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 16: Land use & warming exert same stress on tropical biodiversity

Anthropogenic climate change and land use change in the form of agricultural expansion (‘habitat conversion’ – a sweet description for deforestation) act as synergistic drivers of biodiversity loss – in a Costa Rican environmental experiment – literally drying out the … Continue reading →

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 15: On 65% Earth surface biodiversity is beyond safe limit

Again, the use of a geographical approach (and here defining biodiversity as ‘biotic intactness’) shows the Holocene-Anthropocene Mass Extinction is progressing faster then generally thought – and ‘biodiversity safe limits’, however arbitrarily defined, have already been passed on most of … Continue reading →

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 14: Vertebrates in general decline, mass extinction underestimated

Whether you focus on mammals, birds, reptiles or amphibians – land vertebrates are in rapid decline everywhere around us, illustrating a general decline of Life on Earth – and a prelude to the Holocene-Anthropocene Mass Extinction, that is being underestimated … Continue reading →

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 13: Being small is no guaranteed climate change survival strategy

If you live inside a heap of compost in someone’s backyard, your life may already feel quite miserable. But if you’re really tiny, at least you’re probably thinking your chances of surviving climate chance are –comparatively– okay. Well, our dear … Continue reading →

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 12: Improving ecosystem health decreases climate extinctions

If what goes for worms goes for the wider world, there is an important lesson to be learned: in order to prevent extinctions, we need to improve ecosystem health – before climate change kicks in. That is because ecosystems with … Continue reading →

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 11: New climate-biodiversity models better; now need more data

Predictive models that can forecast biodiversity decline under anthropogenic climate change used to be too simplistic, as these ignored crucial biological mechanisms such as demography, dispersal, evolution, and species interactions (for instance species competition and ecosystem dependence). Fortunately these climate-biodiversity … Continue reading →

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 10: Biodiversity loss accelerates under warming, metastudy shows

Climate change leads to species extinctions and exponentially so: the loss of biodiversity is set to accelerate under continuation of global average temperature rise.

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 9: Cascading extinctions speed up biodiversity loss – and warming

Yes, we found yet another publication that is critical of one-dimensional biodiversity loss projections of climate change – and again it is a component of interspecies interaction that may be underestimated. We’ve previously looked at species competition and at evolutionary … Continue reading →

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 8: Locally biodiversity might increase, kick-starting (global) decline

As species migrate in response to climate change and do so at different rates and dispersal directions, extra ecosystem disturbances might arise, leading to temporary local biodiversity increases – fuelling a net (global) downward trend.