{"id":2373,"date":"2014-08-22T20:24:42","date_gmt":"2014-08-23T00:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/?p=2373"},"modified":"2014-08-22T20:32:32","modified_gmt":"2014-08-23T00:32:32","slug":"diversity-extinction-and-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/diversity-extinction-and-climate-change.html","title":{"rendered":"Diversity, extinction, and climate change"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nIn what category does Georgia rank highest\r\n

    \r\n
  1. \r\nfor species diversity:\r\nplants, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, or fishes?\r\n
  2. \r\nand in which of these four categories:\r\ndiversity, risk, endemism (distinctiveness of species), and extincions?\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

    \r\nGuess first, then look (no peeking)….\r\n\r\n\r\n

    \r\nAccording to\r\n\r\nStates of the Union: Ranking America’s Biodiversity<\/a>,\r\nApril 2002, by NatureServe for The Nature Conservancy.\r\nthe answers are:\r\n

      \r\n
    1. \r\n

      \r\nAmphibians, such as that\r\n\r\ntree frog sleeping in the okra<\/a>.\r\nNorth Carolina ranks first, then Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, and Texas.\r\n

      \r\nFollowed by\r\nfishes. Alabama has the most fish species, then Tennessee,\r\nGeorgia, Kentucky, and Mississippi. (See Table 3 on Page 8.)\r\n

    2. \r\nExtinctions: Hawaii is first, followed by Alabama, California, Texas, and Georgia. (See Table 2 on Page 7.)\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

      \r\nNotice which neighboring state comes ahead of Georgia in two of those lists:\r\nAlabama.\r\n

      \r\nI found this report in an article sent\r\nby Bob Hastings, President of Sierra Club’s Alabama chapter.\r\nDaniel Cusick wrote for E&E News 21 July 2014,\r\n\r\nAla. scientists warn of major loss in biodiversity, a message that’s not popular<\/a>,\r\n

      \r\n

      \r\nBut the biggest challenge for the state’s biologists, ecologists,\r\nbotanists and other natural resource specialists lies not with\r\nAlabama’s 137 endangered and threatened species — the\r\nthird-highest number among the states — or the fragile and\r\noften postage-stamp-sized ecosystems those animals and plants\r\ninhabit.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

      \r\nIt rests squarely in the capital, Montgomery, and the economic hubs\r\nof Birmingham, Mobile and Huntsville, where the state’s leaders have\r\ndetermined that climate change, arguably the world’s most pressing\r\nenvironmental concern, does not much apply to the Heart of Dixie.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

      \r\n“We’re kind of in this zone where we have climate forces battling,\r\nfrom the interior parts of the state to the Gulf Coast,” said R.\r\nScot Duncan, a biologist and associate professor at\r\nBirmingham-Southern College, whose campus occupies a leafy hilltop\r\ntucked between this city’s downtown district and the gritty steel\r\nmills of nearby Fairfield and Bessemer.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

      \r\n“How that battle plays out will have a lot to say about how these\r\necosystems function in the future,” he added.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

      \r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe issues are similar in Georgia (and Florida).\r\nThese state governments have reduced funding for environmental protection,\r\nand aren’t thinking ahead much about what will happen as the climate gets weirder.\r\nIt’s true the Suwannee-Satilla Regional Water Planning Council\r\nconsidered climate change when it\r\nmet in May in Valdosta<\/a>.\r\nBut it only had funding to do a one-shot report.\r\n

      \r\nGeorgia had a State Climatologist, Dr. David Stooksbury, who straightforwardly\r\nsaid\r\n\r\nthe climate is changing and humans are causing it<\/a>\r\nabout that.\r\nBut he was \r\nremoved from his post in 2011 by Gov. Nathan Deal<\/a>.\r\nDeal made the head of GA EPD’s Meteorology Unit, Bill Murphey, the\r\nState Climatologist instead.\r\nAnd unsurprisingly Murphey’s public statements\r\nsound more like weather reporting<\/a>.\r\nAnd Deal and the GA legislature also\r\n\r\ncut GA EPD’s budget<\/a>.\r\n

      \r\nThe opposite is what’s needed.\r\nGeorgia State University research shows that \r\nenvironmental protection can help reduce poverty<\/a>.\r\n

      \r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nWeirder weather caused by climate change means more droughts,\r\nsuch as the one that\r\n\r\nthe pine beetles took advantage of to breed\r\nand kill this longleaf pine tree<\/a>.\r\nHigher temperatures mean\r\nmore and faster tree deaths<\/a>,\r\nand forestry is Georgia’s second largest industry,\r\nwith forests worth even more in ecosystem services.\r\n

      \r\n\r\nAfter the floods of 2009 and 2013,\r\nit’s great that\r\nValdosta has called in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers<\/a> who\r\nmay now start a serious flooding study for the entire\r\nSuwannee River Basin<\/a>.\r\nInsurance companies, which can’t afford to doubt the evidence\r\nof climate change because much of it appears as rapidly-increasing\r\ninsurance claims,\r\n\r\nmay sue local governments that don’t prepare for climate change<\/a>.\r\nThat 2009 flood was not due to a record rain.\r\nThe more likely culprits include too much clearcutting and too much\r\nimpermeable cover such as parking lots and roads.\r\nBut what will happen when we get a record rain on top of those other\r\nproblems?\r\n

      \r\n<\/a>\r\nAnd those same other problems (clearcutting, impermeable surface)\r\nplus agrochemicals and others, contribute to species risk and extinctions.\r\nAccording to that NatureServe report,\r\nGeorgia is number 6 for species diversity,\r\nand number 8 for species risk.\r\nGeorgia is only number 12 for endemism (distintiveness of species),\r\npossibly because it’s number 5 for extinctions.\r\nMaybe the dying amphibians are the canary in Georgia’s gold mine\r\nof species diversity.\r\n

      \r\nFor more about species, see also the interactive online\r\n\r\nNatureServe Explorer<\/a>.\r\n

      \r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In what category does Georgia rank highest for species diversity: plants, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, or fishes? and in which of these four categories: diversity, risk, endemism (distinctiveness of species), and extincions? Guess first, then look (no peeking)….","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[585,6,60],"tags":[2832,1442,24,1689,294,295,2633,3,23,5,2,2760,2780,619,25],"class_list":["post-2373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amphibians","category-okra-paradise-farms","category-plants","tag-amphibians","tag-animals","tag-brown-dog","tag-climate","tag-diversity","tag-ecology","tag-extinction","tag-georgia","tag-gretchen-quarterman","tag-john-s-quarterman","tag-lowndes-county","tag-okra-paradise-farms","tag-plants","tag-risk","tag-yellow-dog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Gj0O-Ch","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2373"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2379,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2373\/revisions\/2379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.okraparadisefarms.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}