Action to stop the pressures or deal with impacts. Anticipation of what is coming down the line.We devised a simple but tractable scheme called the 3As: Beyond quantifying and reporting more doom and gloom, we asked the question: what can be done? Our brains trust comprises 38 experts from 21 universities, CSIRO and the federal Department of Agriculture Water and Environment. And another marine heatwave is predicted for this April. This catastrophe was followed by two cyclones.Ī record-breaking, marine heatwave in late 2019 dealt a further blow. The extreme heat devastated forests and woodlands, kelp forests, seagrass meadows and coral reefs. In the summer of 20, a heatwave spanning more than 300,000 square kilometres ravaged both marine and land ecosystems. Take the last 11 years in Western Australia as an example. Pressures are often additive and extreme. In investigating patterns of collapse, we found most ecosystems experience multiple, concurrent pressures from both global climate change and regional human impacts (such as land clearing). These ‘living fossils’ in Tasmania’s World Heritage Area are unlikely to recover after fire. A burnt pencil pine, one of the world’s oldest species. Put bluntly, current changes across the continent, and their potential outcomes, pose an existential threat to our survival, and other life we share environments with. This is a dire wake-up call - not just a warning. In Victoria, for example, the degradation of giant Mountain Ash forests greatly reduces the amount of water flowing through the Thompson catchment, threatening nearly five million people’s drinking water in Melbourne. We shouldn’t forget how towns ran out of drinking water during the recent drought.ĭrinking water is also at risk when ecosystems collapse in our water catchments. The effects of floods, fires, heatwaves and storms do not stop at farm gates they’re felt equally in agricultural areas and natural ecosystems. Its rivers and other freshwater systems support more than 30% of Australia’s food production. This includes the Murray-Darling Basin, which covers around 14% of Australia’s landmass. Still, collapses are happening, including in regions critical for growing food. And northern Australia has some of the most intact and least-modified stretches of savanna woodlands on Earth. We still have, for instance, some intact reefs on the Great Barrier Reef, especially in deeper waters. Encouragingly, not all ecosystems we examined have collapsed across their entire range. Our study is based on measured data and observations, not modelling or predictions for the future. They work like a super-complex engine: when some components are removed or stop working, knock-on consequences can lead to system failure. Shutterstock The good and bad newsĮcosystems consist of living and non-living components, and their interactions. The Great Barrier Reef has suffered consecutive mass bleaching events, causing swathes of coral to die. We define collapse as the state where ecosystems have changed in a substantial, negative way from their original state – such as species or habitat loss, or reduced vegetation or coral cover – and are unlikely to recover. This includes the arid interior, savannas and mangroves of northern Australia, the Great Barrier Reef, Shark Bay, southern Australia’s kelp and alpine ash forests, tundra on Macquarie Island, and moss beds in Antarctica. We found 19 Australian ecosystems met our criteria to be classified as “collapsing”. These systems sustain life, and evidence of their demise shows we’re exceeding planetary boundaries. In what may be the most comprehensive evaluation of the environmental state of play in Australia, we show major and iconic ecosystems are collapsing across the continent and into Antarctica. This grave reality is what our major research paper, published today, confronts. Crossing such boundaries was considered a risk that would cause environmental changes so profound, they genuinely posed an existential threat to humanity.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |