{"id":65468,"date":"2023-07-09T06:33:32","date_gmt":"2023-07-09T11:33:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=65468"},"modified":"2023-07-09T06:33:32","modified_gmt":"2023-07-09T11:33:32","slug":"ecological-doom-loops-why-ecosystem-collapses-may-occur-much-sooner-than-expected-new-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=65468","title":{"rendered":"Ecological doom-loops: why ecosystem collapses may occur much sooner than expected–new research"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ecological doom-loops: why ecosystem collapses may occur much sooner than expected–new research<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n
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Across the world, rainforests are becoming savanna or farmland, savanna is drying out and turning into desert, and icy tundra is thawing. Indeed, scientific studies have now recorded \u201cregime shifts\u201d like these in\u00a0more than 20 different types of ecosystem<\/a>\u00a0where tipping points have been passed. Across the world,\u00a0more than 20% of ecosystems<\/a>\u00a0are in danger of shifting or collapsing into something different.<\/p>\n

These collapses might happen sooner than you\u2019d think. Humans are already putting ecosystems under pressure in\u00a0many different ways<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 what we refer to as stresses. And when you combine these stresses with an increase in climate-driven extreme weather, the date these tipping points are crossed could be brought forward by as much as 80%.<\/p>\n

This means an ecosystem collapse that we might previously have expected to avoid until late this century could happen as soon as in the next few decades. That\u2019s the gloomy conclusion of our latest research, published in\u00a0Nature Sustainability<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Human population growth, increased economic demands, and greenhouse gas concentrations put pressures on ecosystems and landscapes to supply food and maintain key services such as clean water. The number of extreme climate events is also increasing and\u00a0will only get worse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What really worries us is that climate extremes could hit already stressed ecosystems, which in turn transfer new or heightened stresses to some other ecosystem, and so on. This means one collapsing ecosystem could have a knock-on effect on neighbouring ecosystems through\u00a0successive feedback loops<\/a>: an \u201cecological doom-loop\u201d scenario, with catastrophic consequences.<\/p>\n

How long until a collapse?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In our new research, we wanted to get a sense of the amount of stress that ecosystems can take before collapsing. We did this using models \u2013 computer programs that simulate how an ecosystem will work in future, and how it will react to changes in circumstance.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ecological doom-loops: why ecosystem collapses may occur much sooner than expected–new research Across the world, rainforests are becoming savanna or farmland, savanna is drying out and turning into desert, and icy tundra is thawing. Indeed, scientific studies have now recorded \u201cregime shifts\u201d like these in\u00a0more than 20 different types of ecosystem\u00a0where tipping points have been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[150,22093,1723,33859,33858,18419,33860,8487],"class_list":["post-65468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-collapse","tag-ecological-overshoot","tag-ecosystem-collapse","tag-gregory-cooper","tag-john-dearing","tag-nature-sustainability","tag-simon-willcock","tag-the-conversation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65469,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65468\/revisions\/65469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}