How Climate Change is Resulting in Mass Extinctions
How Climate Change is Resulting in Mass Extinctions Climate change is severely affecting our local and global ecosystems (shocking I know). According to Celine Bellard’s article Impacts of Climate Change on the Future of Biodiversity , if current extinction rates continue, we could find ourselves in a 6th mass extinction event (Bellard, 2012). That doesn’t sound pleasant, but it’s the harsh reality. Climate change is having irreversible consequences for species across the globe. These consequences include: decreases in genetic diversity, modifications to food webs, changes in vegetation, habitat size/ structure, life cycles, and more. Climate change is affecting all levels of biodiversity, from the organism itself, to entire biomes. At the basic level, genetic diversity is decreasing in certain populations due to changes in selection and migration caused by climate change (Bellard, 2012). This in turn affects ecosystem functioning and resilience to climate change and invasive