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Potential Biodiversity Change: Global Patterns and Biome Comparisons

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Part of the book series: Ecological Studies ((ECOLSTUD,volume 152))

Abstract

The purpose of the exercise reported in this book was to develop biodiversity scenarios for the year 2100. The scenarios focused on 10 terrestrial biomes and freshwater ecosystems, and were based on global scenarios of changes in the environment and current understanding about the specific biome sensitivity to global change. The first step was to identify the major drivers of biodiversity change at the global scale: changes in land use, climate, N deposition, biotic exchange (the deliberate or accidental introduction of species into an ecosystem), and atmospheric CO2. Chapters 2 and 3 described these global patterns and the models used to predict their changes for the year 2100. Next, we estimated the magnitude of change in drivers for each biome. Finally, we estimated the sensitivity of each biome to a unit change in the drivers. The expected change in biodiversity due to each driver for each biome resulted from multiplying the expected change in each driver times the sensitivity to a unit change in driver. For each biome, Chapters 4 to 14 described the general patterns of biodiversity, the expected changes in drivers, the sensitivity to changes in drivers, and the expected patterns of biodiversity change. A first attempt at synthesizing this effort of developing global biodiversity scenarios has been published (Sala et al. 2000). This final chapter synthesizes the detailed information presented in each chapter, highlights similarities and differences among biomes, and develops the global biodiversity scenarios.

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© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Sala, O.E., Chapin, F.S., Huber-Sannwald, E. (2001). Potential Biodiversity Change: Global Patterns and Biome Comparisons. In: Chapin, F.S., Sala, O.E., Huber-Sannwald, E. (eds) Global Biodiversity in a Changing Environment. Ecological Studies, vol 152. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0157-8_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0157-8_15

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-387-95286-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-0157-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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