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Testimony submitted to Senate Committee On Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Private Sector and Consumer Solutions
Mann, Roger
Mann, Roger
Abstract
I examine the magnitude of predicted global warming events, and discuss wildlife impacts using examples from the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Worldwide projections of temperature rise over the next century vary between 1.5oC and 5.5oC. Current models do a better job of predicting temperature than they do of predicting rainfall at the regional level. The scenarios for Virginia in the coming century predict temperature increases from 3.5oC to as high as 6.5oC clustered in the summer months, but the accompanying overall rainfall patterns vary between drier and wetter in total amount, sometimes with a wetter spring but drier fall months, and often with more extreme rainfall events. Fresh water supply dominates much of what we see in wildlife biology.
Virginia is an excellent example of a natural laboratory in which to study the impacts of global warming. It sits at a number of important biogeographic boundaries where animal and plant species, both terrestrial and aquatic, change in north-south and east-west directions. Climate, and particularly temperature, is a causative agent in determining these boundaries.
A transect from west to east across the landscape of Virginia includes the forested foothills of the Appalachians, the coastal plains, freshwater wetlands, tidal salty estuaries feeding the Chesapeake Bay, coastal barrier islands and the inner continental shelf. Remarkable diversity exists both along the transect and within each habitat type. The plant and animal communities that occupy these habitats have evolved over geological time. Destabilizing the relationships between just a few of these contributing species can have a domino like effect resulting in large and deleterious impacts on the entire community. Examples of projected global warming impact include higher prevalence of forest fires, increased impact of insects on forest resources, increased displacement of native plants by invasive species in forests, freshwater wetlands and managed agriculture, change in river flow and water quality impacts on freshwater fishes, increasing low dissolved oxygen dead zones in the Chesapeake Bay, increased incidence and intensity of diseases of both fish and oysters, loss of critical submerged aquatic vegetation habitat, reduced feeding opportunities for migratory bird populations on the Atlantic flyway, and the changing distribution of ecologically and commercially important species on the inner continental shelf.
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Global warming and wildlife impacts in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
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2007-02-07
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Virginia Institute of Marine Science
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Global_warming_2007.pdf
Adobe PDF, 36.56 KB
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Natural Resources