Evaluating biodiversity and vulnerability

1. Evaluating biodiversity and vulnerability

2. What natural or human factors have caused large scale loss of diversity? Think, pair, share

4. Habitat loss • GM crops How do humans lead to loss in biodiversity? Hunting • Habitat degradation • Pollution • Pesticides • Monoculture Introducing non-native species • Habitat fragmentation

5. So, how do humans lead to loss in biodiversity? There were 9 things… can you remember them all.

6. What does this graph show? How often have major ice ages happened? Every 10 000 years? Every 100,000 years? Every 200,000 years?

7. How do rainforests contribute to global biodiversity? Remember any of these? • More than 20 percent of the world ………………… is produced in the Amazon Rainforest. • More than 50% of the world’s estimated 10 million species of ………………………………..live in the tropical rainforests. • 1 ………………. in Brazil can sustain a greater variety of fish than is found in all of Europe’s rivers. • A 25-acre plot of rainforest in Borneo may contain more than 700 species of ……………. – a number equal to the total …………………. diversity of North America. • 1 rainforest reserve/reserves in Peru are/is home to more species of ………………….. than are found in the entire United States. • The number of species of fish in the Amazon exceeds the number found in all of the ……………………………..

8. What is this? Lyre

9. Who has the best memory? The answers… • More than 20 percent of the world oxygen is produced in the Amazon Rainforest. • More than 50% of the world’s estimated 10 million species of plants, animals and insects live in the tropical rainforests. • 1 pond in Brazil can sustain a greater variety of fish than is found in all of Europe’s rivers. • A 25-acre plot of rainforest in Borneo may contain more than 700 species of trees – a number equal to the total tree diversity of North America. • One rainforest reserve/reserves in Peru are/is home to more species of birds than are found in the entire United States. • The number of species of fish in the Amazon exceeds the number found in 100% of the Atlantic Ocean.

10. Watch the BBC bitesize clip and fill in the DVD worksheet.

11. The Burning Season • Watch this and get ready for • 5Ws.

12. Burning Season • Causes of rainforest destruction • 20 min research: Why was Chico Mendes murdered? • Recap: How do we decrease diversity? • What are the causes of the mass extinctions? • Tests back /14 Highest mark 13

14. Why are the rainforests under this threat? • Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth’s land surface; now they cover a mere 6%. • Experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years. • One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost each second. • Experts estimates that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. • The Amazon Rainforest covers over a billion acres. If Amazonia were a country, it would be the ninth largest in the world.

15. Rainforests are often called biodiversity hotspots. How are they able to be so diverse in terms of species? What is the other big biodiversity hotspot ecosystem? What is the perceived vulnerability of rainforests?

16. Causes of extinctions Cretaceous-Tertiary End Triassic Permian-Triassic Late Devonian Ordovician-Silurian 6th extinction – 100,000 ya until now

17. What caused them?

18. The Triassic-Jurassic extinction The end-Triassic, or Triassic-Jurassic extinction event about 200 million years ago is thought by many to possibly have set dinosaurs on the path to their 135-million-year domination of much of life on Earth. It also ended life for roughly half of all species. Its cause remains under great debate, with the best contender so far being the massive volcanic eruptions at the "Central Atlantic magmatic province," a region that encompassed a staggering 4.2 million square miles (11 million square kilometers), an area larger than Canada.

19. The Ordovician-Silurian extinctions • The earliest of the Big Five, the end-Ordovician or Ordovician-Silurian extinction events some 444 million years ago, are reckoned by many to be the second largest. • These also consisted of a pair of die-offs, apparently involving massive glaciation and a resulting fall in sea levels. The cause of this glaciation remains a mystery, but one idea was that land plants actually caused it, pulling so much carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere that global cooling resulted. • Curiously, even though the end-Ordovician led to a huge loss of life, in a way it actually had very little impact on the persistence of lineages - the same animals that dominated before the end-Ordovician dominated afterward.

20. The late Devonian extinctions • The late Devonian extinction events were actually two sharp pulses of death about 360 million years ago, each just 100,000 to 300,000 years apart. • Each pulse was accompanied by a massive drop in temperature, with the steaming seas of the Devonian—surface temperatures of which were about 34 degrees C dropping to about 26 degrees C), "and marine organisms would not have liked that at all,". As to what caused these cold snaps, the ever-popular suspects are ash and dust kicked up by either astronomical impacts or massive volcanism.

21. The end-Cretaceous or Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction • K-T killed off all dinosaurs save birds roughly 65 million years ago, as well as roughly half of all species on the planet. • Not only did mammals sweep across the planet after K-T, but sharks expanded across the seas. • Although research suggests the planet was on the verge of environmental upheaval before the K-T extinction event, the straw that broke the dinosaur's back is widely thought to have been an impact with an asteroid or comet. Still, a number of researchers contend evidence commonly linked with such an impact, which is rare on the Earth's crust, could also be caused by the massive volcanic eruptions at the Deccan Flats in India, another popular contender for the dinosaur-killing catastrophe.

22. Current situation • Most scientists think the Earth is going through a mass extinction now. This is related to human causes. It is the first extinction to have biotic causes. Phase 1 began when humans dispersed to different parts of the world about 100,000 years ago. Phase two began when we turned to agriculture about 10,000 years ago. The ‘natural’ rate of extinction is 10-100 species a year. Humans have changed this to 27,000 species a year from the rainforests alone.

23. The Permian-Triassic extinction • The largest of the Big Five was the end-Permian or Permian-Triassic extinction event roughly 250 million years ago, which eliminated as much as 95 percent of the planet's species. • Before this extinction, marine animals were mostly filter feeders stuck in place on the seafloor. Afterward, the seas became far more complex with mobile creatures such as snails, urchins and crabs. • The most likely final trigger for the end-Permian was again massive volcanism, this time at the Siberian Traps, which spewed as much as 2.7 million square miles (7 million square kilometers of lava out, an area nearly as large as Australia.

24. What factors make some species more prone to extinction than others? These are all endangered….

26. Slender-billed grackle – one marsh in Mexico Gone Small population size – small gene pool, less likely to adapt if there is a change Limited distribution – if habitat changes

27. What factors make some species more prone to extinction than others? For our 3 species and then your 3 speciesExtinct, critical and back from the brink • Habitat specialists e.g. panda • Low reproductive capacity e.g. panda • Poor competitors e.g. dodo • Large mammals e.g. elephant • Valuable products e.g. rhino • Altruistic species e.g. elephant • Clumping e.g. pigeon • Position in food chain e.g. whale • Small population size and limited distribution e.g. panda

28. Discuss current estimates of numbers of species and past and present rates of species extinction.

29. Determining conservation status • What factors would you choose to determine whether a species should be conserved or not? • Outline the factors that are used to determine a species’ Red List conservation status. • Rank the factors in terms of those you most agree with to those you least agree with.

30. Case history of an area threatened by human activity