Climate change in Australian tropical rainforests: An impending environmental catastrophe

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Volumn 270, Issue 1527, 2003, Pages 1887-1892

  Williams, Stephen E ^a   Bolitho, Elizabeth E ^a   Fox, Samantha ^a  

^a JAMES COOK UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

Biodiversity; Climate change; Extinction; Montane; Rainforest; Range size

Indexed keywords

BIODIVERSITY; CLIMATE CHANGE; EXTINCTION; GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION; GLOBAL CHANGE; RAINFOREST;

ARTICLE; AUSTRALIA; BIODIVERSITY; BIOGEOGRAPHIC REGION; CLIMATE CHANGE; DISASTER; ECOSYSTEM; ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT; GLOBAL CLIMATE; GREENHOUSE EFFECT; MODEL; NONHUMAN; PREDICTION; PRIORITY JOURNAL; SPECIES ENDEMICITY; SPECIES EXTINCTION; TROPIC CLIMATE; TROPICAL RAIN FOREST; VERTEBRATE;

VERTEBRATA;

EID: 0141860957     PISSN: 09628452     EISSN: 14712970     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2003.2464     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. Easterling, D.R., Meehl, G.A., Parmesan, C., Changnon, S. A., Karl, T. R. & Mearns, L. O. 2000 Climate extremes: observations, modelling, and impacts. Science 289, 2068-2074.
2. Frith, C. B. & Frith, D. W. 1985 Seasonality of insect abundance in an Australian upland tropical rainforest. Aust. J. Ecol. 10, 237-248.
3. Hilbert, D. W., Ostendorf, B. & Hopkins, M. S. 2001 Sensitivity of tropical forests to climate change in the humid tropics of north Queensland. Aust. Ecol. 26, 590-603.
4. Hilbert, D. W., Bradford, M., Parker, T. & Westcott, D.A. 2003 Golden bowerbird (Prionodura newtoniana) habitat in past, present and future climates: predicted extinction of a vertebrate in tropical highlands due to global warming. Biol. Conserv. (In the press.)
5. Hill, J. K., Thomas, C. D., Fox, R., Telfer, M. G., Willis, S. G., Asher, J. & Huntley, B. 2002 Responses of butterflies to twentieth century climate warming: implications for future ranges. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B 269, 2163-2171. (DOI 10.1098/rspb.2002.2134.)
6. Houghton, J. T., Ding, Y., Griggs, D. J., Noguer, M., van der Linden, P. J., Dai, X., Maskell, K. & Johnson, C. A. (eds) 2001 IPCC Third assessment report: climate change 2001. Cambridge University Press.
7. Houlder, D. J., Hutchinson, M. F., Nix, H. A. & McMahon, J. P. 2000 ANUCLIM v. 5.1. Canberra: Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies, Australian National University.
8. Hughes, L. 2000 Biological consequences of global warming: is the signal already apparent? Trends Ecol. Evol. 15, 56-61.
9. 2 on the foliar chemistry of seedlings of two rainforest trees from north-east Australia: implications for folivorous marsupials. Aust. Ecol. 26, 165-172.
10. Kanowski, J., Hopkins, M. S., Marsh, H. & Winter, J. W. 2001 Ecological correlates of folivore abundance in north Queensland rainforests. Wildl. Res. 28, 1-8.
11. Knapp, A. K., Fay, P. A., Blair, J. M., Collins, S. L., Smith, M. D., Carlisle, J. D., Harper, C. W., Danner, B. T., Lett, M. S. & Carron, J. K. 2002 Rainfall variability, carbon cycling, and plant species diversity in a mesic grassland. Science 298, 2202-2205.
12. Körner, C. 2002 Mountain biodiversity, its causes and functions: an overview. In Mountain biodiversity: a global assessment (ed. C. Körner & E. M. Spehn), pp. 3-20. London: Parthenon Publishing.
13. Laurance, W. F. 1991 Ecological correlates of extinction proneness in Australian tropical rainforest mammals. Conserv. Biol. 5, 79-89.
14. Laurance, W. F. 1994 Rainforest fragmentation and the structure of small mammal communities in tropical Queensland. Biol. Conserv. 69, 23-32.
15. 2 atmospheres on the nutritional quality of Eucalyptus foliage and its interaction with soil nutrient and light availability. Oecologia 109, 59-68.
16. Lawton, J. H. 1995 Population dynamic principles. In Extinction rates (ed. J. H. Lawton & R. M. May), pp. 147-163. Oxford University Press.
17. McLaughlin, J. F., Hellmann, J. J., Boggs, C. L. & Ehrlich, P. R. 2002 Climate change hastens population extinctions. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 99, 6070-6074.
18. Milly, P. C. D., Wetherald, R. T., Dunne, K. A. & Delworth, T. L. 2002 Increasing risk of great floods in a changing climate. Nature 415, 514-517.
19. Moritz, C. 2002 Strategies to protect biological diversity and the evolutionary processes that sustain it. Syst. Biol. 51, 238-254.
20. Nix, H. A. & Switzer, M. A. 1991 Rainforest animals: atlas of vertebrates endemic to the wet tropics. Canberra: Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service.
21. Palmer, T. N. & Raianen, J. 2002 Quantifying the risk of extreme seasonal precipitation events in a changing climate. Nature 415, 512-514.
22. Parmesan, C. 1996 Climate change and species' ranges. Nature 382, 765-766.
23. Parmesan, C. & Yohe, G. 2003 A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems. Nature 421, 37-42.
24. Peterson, A. T., Ortega-Huerta, M. A., Bartley, J., Sanchez-Cordero, V., Sorberon, J., Buddermeler, R. H. & Stockwell, D. R. B. 2002 Future projections for Mexican faunas under global climate change scenarios. Nature 416, 626-629.
25. Pounds, J. A., Fogden, M. P. & Campbell, J. H. 1999 Biological response to climate change on a tropical mountain. Nature 398, 611-615.
26. Root, T. L., Price, J. T., Hall, K. R., Schneider, S. H., Rosenzweig, C. & Pounds, J. A. 2003 Fingerprints of global warming on wild animals and plants. Nature 421, 57-60.
27. Schneider, C. J., Cunningham, M. & Moritz, C. 1998 Comparative phylogeography and the history of endemic vertebrates in the wet tropics rainforests of Australia. Mol. Ecol. 7, 487-498.
28. Still, C. J., Foster, N. F. & Schneider, S. H. 1999 Simulating the effects of climate change on tropical montane cloud forests. Nature 398, 608-610.
29. Walker, B., Carpenter, S., Anderies, J., Abel, N., Cumming, G., Janssen, M., Lebel, L., Norberg, J., Peterson, G. D. & Pritchard, R. 2002 Resilience management in social-ecological systems: a working hypothesis for a participatory approach. Conserv. Ecol. 6, 14. See http://www.consecol.org/vol6/iss1/art14.
30. Walsh, K. J. E. & Ryan, B. F. 2000 Tropical cyclone intensity increase near Australia as a result of climate change. J. Climate 13, 3029-3036.
31. Walther, G., Post, E., Convey, P., Menzel, A., Parmesan, C., Beebee, T. J. C., Fromentin, J.-M., Hoegh-Guldberg, O. & Bairlein, F. 2002 Ecological responses to recent climate change. Nature 416, 389-395.
32. Williams, S. E. 1997 Patterns of mammalian species richness in the Australian tropical rainforests: are extinctions during historical contractions of the rainforest the primary determinant of current patterns in biodiversity? Wildl. Res. 24, 513-530.
33. Williams S. E. 2003 Impacts of global climate change on the rainforest vertebrates of the Australian Wet Tropics. In Climate change impacts on biodiversity in Australia (ed. M. Howden, L. Hughes, M. Dunlop, I. Zethoven, D. Hilbert & C. Chilcott), pp. 50-52. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. See http://www.ea.gov.au/biodiversity/science/bdac/index.htm.
34. Williams, S. E. & Hero, J.-M. 2001 Multiple determinants of Australian tropical frog biodiversity. Biol. Conserv. 98, 1-10.
35. Williams, S. E. & Pearson, R. G. 1997 Historical rainforest contractions, localised extinctions and patterns of vertebrate endemism in the rainforests of Australia's wet tropics. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B264, 709-716. (DOI 10.1098/rspb.1997.0101.)
36. Williams, S. E., Pearson, R. G. & Walsh, P. J. 1996 Distributions and biodiversity of the terrestrial vertebrates of Australia's Wet Tropics: a review of current knowledge. Pacific Conserv. Biol. 2, 327-362.
37. Winter, J. W. 1988 Ecological specialization of mammals in Australian tropical and sub-tropical rainforest: refugial and ecological determinism. In The ecology of Australia's wet tropics (ed. R. Kitching), pp. 127-138. Sydney: Surrey Beatty.
38. Winter, J. W. 1997 Responses of non-volant mammals to late Quaternary climatic changes in the wet tropics region of north-eastern Australia. Wildl. Res. 24, 493-511.