Skip to main content

Currently Skimming:

2 Frontier Questions in Climate Change and Polar Ecosystems
Pages 25-38

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.


From page 25...
... • ow is climate change altering biodiversity in polar regions and H what will be the regional and global impacts? • ow will increases in human activities intensify ecosystem impacts H in the polar regions?
From page 26...
... WILL A RAPIDLy SHRINKINg CRyOSPHERE TIP POLAR ECOSySTEMS INTO NEW STATES? Many of the workshop participants emphasized the need to quantify both the vulnerability and resilience of the polar ecosystems, including local communities and populations, in response to the rapidly shrinking cryosphere, and to understand the connectivity between the cryosphere and the global system.
From page 27...
... Declining seasonal sea ice and the disappearance of the Arctic perennial sea ice pack, as well as the shrinking Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets are processes of particular concern to the workshop participants because of their inevitability and/or severity of impacts and the potential for tipping points to be reached. Additional processes with potential tipping points of concern include dieback of the boreal forest, a northward shifting treeline into tundra regions, CO2 and CH4 release from carbonrich permafrost soils, and release of marine methane hydrates from subsea permafrost.
From page 28...
... 28 FIguRE 2.1 Potential policy-relevant tipping elements in the climate system. Subsystems indicated could exhibit threshold-type behavior in response to anthropogenic climate forcing, where a small perturbation at a critical point qualitatively alters the future fate of the system.
From page 29...
... to accurately predict polar ecosystem response to climate forcing. Models that address the complex interactions between living organisms and their environment (i.e., a focus on "biocomplexity")
From page 30...
... Better understanding of how polar marine ecosystems respond to climate change requires improved models of coupled atmosphere-ocean-ecosystem dynamics at local, regional, and global scales, informed and driven by new observations. Better prediction of polar ecosystem changes requires new models of coupled global-scale atmosphere-ocean circulation that simulates the teleconnections between lower-latitude climate variability and high latitude responses of atmospheric pressure and wind fields, ocean circulation, and sea ice.
From page 31...
... Modeling the potential impacts of lower trophic level species changes on marine carbon cycling, such as the impact of a shift to smaller phytoplankton species production observed in the Western Amerasian Arctic with increased freshwater content (Li et al., 2009) , is critical to forecasting potential large-scale ecosystem response to climate forcing.
From page 32...
... . Polar regions are expected to be primary drivers of the global climate system because of the strong modification of the surface-energy budget through snow and ice cover, which is tightly coupled to the global circulation of the atmosphere and the ocean.
From page 33...
... Rising sea levels would cascade through the world's tightly connected economic and political systems producing catastrophic global impacts. • Ocean circulation: The increase in freshwater input to the sea could influence ocean circulation producing wide spread global impacts (Lemke et al., 2007)
From page 34...
... HOW IS CLIMATE CHANgE ALTERINg bIODIVERSITy IN POLAR REgIONS AND WHAT WILL bE THE REgIONAL AND gLObAL IMPACTS? Terrestrial The rapid warming of the Arctic is potentially leading to rapid shifts in productivity, habitat, and biodiversity that are likely to have profound implications for northern ecosystems and for the globe.
From page 35...
... . In addition, a principal risk for boreal forest is that climate change appears to be happening so rapidly that a continued shift in the location of areas with a climate optimum for forest growth could outpace tree migration rates (Davis and Shaw, 2001)
From page 36...
... HOW WILL INCREASES IN HuMAN ACTIVITIES INTENSIFy ECOSySTEM IMPACTS IN THE POLAR REgIONS? Workshop participants commented on the possibility of increased human activity in the polar regions as a result of greater access and more open water days.
From page 37...
... . There are serious concerns that tourism is promoting environmental degradation in the polar regions in both the Arctic and Antarctic by putting extra pressures on land, wildlife, water, transportation, and other basic necessities.


This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More information on Chapter Skim is available.