Biosphere Changes in a Warming World: An Ecological Call to Action

Review of Thomas E. Lovejoy, and Lee Hannah, editors, Biodiversity and Climate Change: Transforming the Biosphere. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 2019. Editors Thomas E. Lovejoy and Lee Hannah have convened an impressive international cadre of colleagues to write a state-of-the-science volume about climate-change impacts on the diversity of life on Earth. Fourteen years ago, the editors produced a seminal book, Climate Change and Biodiversity (Lovejoy and Hannah, Yale University Press, 2005), which elucidated the many ways that climate change was affecting life. In the years since then, ecology has advanced, as has our awareness of climate change and of the complexity of its effects. Moreover, climate change is progressing far more rapidly than anticipated even fourteen years ago, making it essential to have a current, interdisciplinary synthesis like this available today for ecologists and their students, managers, and policymakers. Divided into five sections, with a foreword by E. O. Wilson, this edited volume covers the full spectrum of climate change, from an ecological perspective. The section titles are presented as a series of didactic climate-change questions. Part I, “What is climate change biology?” sets the stage and provides necessary context and definitions. Part II, “What changes are we observing?” offers chapters that provide details of recent and long-term studies and findings across a wide range of ecosystems, with three in-depth case studies featuring the Bering Sea, salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.), and the Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae). Part III, “What does the past tell us?” takes a paleoecological approach, with a case study on sea-level rise. Part IV, “What does the future hold?” uses a modeling approach to predict climate-change impacts, with case studies on changes in species-movement routes, the tipping point in Amazonia, and the effects of frost in Rocky Mountain ecosystems. Park V, “How can policy respond?” examines protected area management and adaptive management, with case studies on extinction risk, habitat connectivity, and using ecological wildlife interactions to balance the carbon budget. Biodiversity and Climate Change's primary audience is academic. Its chapters are written in journal article style, but with more commentary, illustrated with tables and figures, occasional boxes, and with robust literature-cited sections. Their objective is to collectively synthesize and update the science on how climate change is affecting biodiversity. As an example, chapters on coral reef biodiversity loss (Hoeg-Guldbergh), geological tipping points (Williams and Burke), and the rapid death of tropical trees in a system previously thought more resilient to climate change (Watson, Segan, and Tewksbury), and the asymmetrical effects of climate change on food webs (Jarvis, McCann, and O'Connor) go far in terms of presenting the most current science and contextualizing it. In addition to the chapters, the editors very effectively use stand-alone case studies to engage a broader audience and illustrate the content of the chapters. Aimed more toward natural resources managers and policymakers, these case studies provide famous examples of climate-change impacts on biodiversity. Compelling and succinct, each makes a clear point about climate change. Strong science writing characterizes the case studies. Examples include David Inouye's case study based on his two-decades-plus of research at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado about climate change and plant and pollinator phenology. Here, he discusses how early snowmelt combined with late frost is negatively influencing the production of flowers, fruits, and seeds by frost-sensitive plants. Oswald Schmitz’ case study, based on his long-term old-field research, describes how stealth predators (e.g., the spider Pisaurina mira) can alter foraging behavior of their herbivorous prey (e.g., the grasshopper Melanoplus femurrubrum), thereby increasing the ability of the landscape to sequester carbon, and how these effects apply to other ecosystem types and to large-bodied mammalian species. Grant Ballard's and David Ainley's case study about the fate of the Adélie penguin is perhaps the most poignant. The authors succinctly depict the diverging, intricate ecologies of this species’ populations (expanding in East Antarctica, going extinct on the Antarctic Peninsula), with a projected total species extinction in Antarctica when warming reaches 2°C above pre-industrial levels. At nearly 400 pages, this is the sort of book that ecologists will want to peruse by topic rather than read from beginning to end. I consider it a treasure trove of material, due to the biosphere scale of the chapters, from coral reefs to the tropics to the Arctic to temperate regions. Since my work as an ecologist takes me to six continents where I oversee projects in all kinds of ecosystems from marine to terrestrial, many of these projects addressing climate change, I know this book will be highly useful to me. The final section of the book contains a particularly relevant chapter by Lovejoy entitled, “The greening of the emerald planet: the role of ecosystem restoration in reducing climate change.” Here, in language that anyone can understand, the author discusses some of the things that can be done to increase carbon stocks globally. It provides a very fitting capstone to the previous 24 chapters and case studies, which can leave even the most experienced, pragmatic ecologist feeling hopeless. Lovejoy discusses the role of reforestation, wetland conservation, grassland restoration, and peatland conservation in sequestering carbon. He states that “Ecological restoration has yet to emerge as the global priority it deserves… The success of ecological restoration for climate-change management will require a more integrated and sustainable approach to development, especially in the face of billions more people globally and the need to provide for them adequately.” I recommend this book to anyone who is concerned about how climate change may alter our biosphere and wants to know what tools are available to mitigate and adapt to these challenges. As Lovejoy explains, “The term Anthropocene… could also come to mean a new age in which we learn to manage ourselves for better outcomes for humans and other forms of life.” This, perhaps, is the strongest message this important book delivers.