Welcome to the planet of 7 billion!

Within only three weeks, the world population will hit 7 billion according to the United Nation Population Fund. Together with rapidly increasing consumption, this of course means that our impact on the planet is greater than ever: we destroy rainforests that accommodate some of the most species rich ecosystems, (so called biodiversity hotspots), we create lakes through construction of massive hydroelectric dams, only to destroy others through over extraction of freshwater. We already caused the climate to warm by around 0.6℃, and are well on the way to emit the trillionth tonne of carbon which would mean being committed to a 'dangerous', 2℃ warming. Carbon in the atmosphere of course not only implies warming and changing weather patterns, but also has the potential to impact marine life through causing ocean acidification, and affects the global carbon cycle. In short, we generate global environmental change.


Plate 1: The Aral Sea (top left and right). Probabley the world's best knwon, and most dramatic example of a vanishing lake. Lake Kariba (bottom). Lake Kariba is one of the world's largest artificial lakes, created by the construction of Kariba dam on river Zambezi. Soruce: http://www.wikipedia.org/

I set up this blog to explore the wide ranging impacts of this recent change on wildlife across the globe, and to investigate how this change will redraw global biogeographic patterns through evolution, extinction and migration. For the sake of simplicity I will try to focus on responses on the species level, but will not neglect ecosystem level responses either. Essentially this is a science blog which will deal with the findings of scientific papers. However I will also keep an eye on the press and will reflect on current issues and topics to make it more interesting for the general reader. I hope you will find my blog interesting, and will learn something new by reading it.

I’m looking forward to receiving your comments and reading your opinion!