IsaacNewton
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- Jun 20, 2015
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The boreal forest of Canada is huge, it stretches from the east coast to the west coast and covers probably 1/2 of the total surface area of Canada (est). Yet there are only 20 species of trees in the whole forest.
In the Amazon rain forest, you can find more than 1,000+ tree species in a few square mile area. This is also true of other orgainisms like insects, frogs, birds. The diversity is very large. However, each of the species in the rain forest is very narrowly adapted to its niche. The competition is so fierce that, for instance, a tree species may only exist in an area of a few hundred yards square. And most species are pH sensitive as well as temperature sensitive.
There are thousands of scientists studying the rain forest, actually living there and taking daily measurements. As the standard temp rises, a tree species for example will start to seek out higher elevations where the temperature is in its habitable zone. Trees migrate up mountains, or the seeds they produce sprout only in higher elevations where the temperature is where their evolution has told them to sprout. Even tiny variations in temperature can wipe out species that can't quickly make this move, and many can't. The estimate right now is that 14 species a day go extinct in the rain forest due to Global Warming.
A mass extinction started a number of years ago and it is manmade. The current geologic era is in the process of being renamed to the Anthropocene epoch. The era of man. Because our activity has affected the entire globe enough that even 100 million years from now if an archeologist were alive and looked at the small sliver of Earth dated to this time period our activity would be recognizable in the sediments. Similar to when we look at the small sliver at the K/T boundary from 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs went extinct.
In the Amazon rain forest, you can find more than 1,000+ tree species in a few square mile area. This is also true of other orgainisms like insects, frogs, birds. The diversity is very large. However, each of the species in the rain forest is very narrowly adapted to its niche. The competition is so fierce that, for instance, a tree species may only exist in an area of a few hundred yards square. And most species are pH sensitive as well as temperature sensitive.
There are thousands of scientists studying the rain forest, actually living there and taking daily measurements. As the standard temp rises, a tree species for example will start to seek out higher elevations where the temperature is in its habitable zone. Trees migrate up mountains, or the seeds they produce sprout only in higher elevations where the temperature is where their evolution has told them to sprout. Even tiny variations in temperature can wipe out species that can't quickly make this move, and many can't. The estimate right now is that 14 species a day go extinct in the rain forest due to Global Warming.
A mass extinction started a number of years ago and it is manmade. The current geologic era is in the process of being renamed to the Anthropocene epoch. The era of man. Because our activity has affected the entire globe enough that even 100 million years from now if an archeologist were alive and looked at the small sliver of Earth dated to this time period our activity would be recognizable in the sediments. Similar to when we look at the small sliver at the K/T boundary from 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs went extinct.
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