Impacts to Species in Global “Hotspots”
The Art
The Science
Species in biodiversity hotspots already show changes in response to climate change…The geographic ranges of the animal and plant species assessed have shifted from low to high latitudes in response to climate warming on land and in the ocean…. On land, climate change-induced shifts towards higher elevations are also common in biodiversity hotspots …; while, in the ocean, climate-induced shifts to greater water depths are little studied. In the ocean, abrupt mortality of habitat-forming species on coral reefs and kelp forests, especially following heatwaves, are increasing in frequency in biodiversity hotspots….
All biodiversity hotspots are impacted, to differing degrees, by human activities…. Climate change impacts are compounded by other anthropogenic impacts. These include habitat loss and fragmentation, hunting, fishing and its bycatch, over-exploitation, water abstraction, nutrient enrichment, pollution, human introduction of invasive species, pests and diseases. All of these reduce climate resilience… , complicating the attribution of observed changes to climate change….
…The risk of species extinction increases with warming in all climate change projections for native species studied in hotspots (high confidence), being about 10-times greater for endemic species from 1.5°C to 3°C above pre-industrial levels . Of the 6116 projections for more than 2700 species assessed in biodiversity hotspots, ~44% were found to be at high extinction risk, and ~24% at very high extinction risk due to climate change…. Very high extinction risk in biodiversity hotspots due to climate change is more common for endemic species than other native species…. For these endemic species, considering all scenarios and time periods evaluated, ~100% on islands, ~84% on mountains, ~12% on continents … and ~54% in the ocean (notably the Mediterranean) …are projected to be threatened with extinction due to climate change. With further warming, increasingly high risks of local and global extinctions are projected in biodiversity hotspots from climate-related stressors…. {CCP1.2.1; Figure CCP1.7; Figure CCP1.6}[ “confidence levels - i.e., very high, high, medium and low, not included.]
The art is based on the “proportion” graphs on the right side of the figure. Underlying the image are the numbers and words in bold italics in the quoted text.
