Birds and wind farms/climate change

General birdwatching discussion, help with bird identification, and all other things relating to wild birds and birding in NZ that don't fit in one of the other forums.
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Michael Szabo
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Heermann's Gull and climate change

Postby Michael Szabo » Sat Jan 21, 2017 10:22 am

Mitochondrial DNA shows past climate change effects on gulls

"A new study in The Auk: Ornithological Advances uses the mitochondrial DNA of Heermann's Gulls to draw conclusions about how their population has expanded in the Gulf of California since the time of the glaciers—and, by extension, how human-caused climate change may affect them in the future. ... During the last 16 years, the warm oceanographic anomalies in the Gulf of California have increased in frequency from an average of one every six or seven years to six anomalies in the last 16 years, says Ruiz. The consensus among researchers now is that there is a general productivity decline across the trophic web, including the availability of the small pelagic fish on which the seabirds feed."

Link to story: https://phys.org/news/2017-01-mitochond ... gulls.html

Link to paper: http://americanornithologypubs.org/doi/ ... UK-16-57.1
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Neil Fitzgerald
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Climate change ‘ecological trap’ for African penguins

Postby Neil Fitzgerald » Fri Feb 10, 2017 1:58 pm

Climate change and commercial fishing are luring endangered African penguins into an “ecological trap” that threatens their survival, a new study warns.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/climate-cha ... n-penguins
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Michael Szabo
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Antarctic sea ice shrinks to smallest extent on record

Postby Michael Szabo » Fri Feb 17, 2017 9:17 am

"Sea ice around Antarctica has shrunk to the smallest annual extent on record, preliminary US satellite data has shown. Ice floating around the frozen continent usually melts to its smallest for the year towards the end of February, the southern hemisphere summer, before expanding again as the autumn chill sets in. This year, sea ice extent contracted to 883,015 sq miles (2.28m sq km) on 13 February, according to daily data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). That extent is a fraction smaller than a previous low of 884,173 sq miles recorded on 27 February 1997 in satellite records dating back to 1979."

Link to article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... ver-extent
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Michael Szabo
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25% of threatened bird species 'impacted by climate change'

Postby Michael Szabo » Sat Feb 18, 2017 1:14 pm

A new study has found that half of all threatened terrestrial mammal species and a quarter of all threatened bird species are already being negatively impacted by climate change.

Link: http://www.birdlife.org/worldwide/news/ ... ed-species
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Michael Szabo
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Major change to Earth’s oceans linked to a warming climate

Postby Michael Szabo » Sun Feb 19, 2017 8:39 am

"A large research synthesis, published in one of the world’s most influential scientific journals, has detected a decline in the amount of dissolved oxygen in oceans around the world — a long-predicted result of climate change that could have severe consequences for marine organisms if it continues. The paper, published Wednesday in the journal Nature by oceanographer Sunke Schmidtko and two colleagues from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany, found a decline of more than 2 percent in ocean oxygen content worldwide between 1960 and 2010. The loss, however, showed up in some ocean basins more than others. The largest overall volume of oxygen was lost in the largest ocean — the Pacific — but as a percentage, the decline was sharpest in the Arctic Ocean, a region facing Earth’s most stark climate change."

Link to article in The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ene ... 844b4509dc
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Neil Fitzgerald
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Climate impacts on global hot spots of marine biodiversity e.g. NZ

Postby Neil Fitzgerald » Fri Mar 03, 2017 12:48 pm

Francisco Ramírez, Isabel Afán, Lloyd S. Davis and André Chiaradia 2017. Climate impacts on global hot spots of marine biodiversity. Science Advances. http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/ ... 01198.full

New Zealand is surrounded by one of the world's marine biodiversity hotspots (hot spot 5 on figure below).
These hotspots coincide with areas most severely affected by climate change and industrial fishing.

F2.large.jpg
Fig. 2 (Ramírez et al.) Environmental stressors affecting hot spots of marine biodiversity.
F2.large.jpg (354.17 KiB) Viewed 6053 times
Clinton9
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Re: Birds and wind farms/climate change

Postby Clinton9 » Fri Mar 03, 2017 6:48 pm

But about numbers of ground frosts and hot days per year in Far North, Auckland, Thames, Wellington, Christchurch in New Zealand ???

Had the numbers of ground frosts per year decreasing over last 20 years in Far North, Auckland, Thames, Wellington ???
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Michael Szabo
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Seabirds and climate change

Postby Michael Szabo » Tue Mar 07, 2017 10:15 am

Projected distributions of Southern Ocean albatrosses, petrels and fisheries as a consequence of climatic change

Abstract: Given the major ongoing influence of environmental change on the oceans, there is a need to understand and predict the future distributions of marine species in order to plan appropriate mitigation to conserve vulnerable species and ecosystems. In this study we use tracking data from seven large seabird species of the Southern Ocean (Black-browed Albatross Thalassarche melanophris, Grey-headed Albatross T. chrysostoma, Northern Giant Petrel Macronectes halli, Southern Giant Petrel M. giganteus, Tristan Albatross Diomedea dabbenena Wandering Albatross D. exulans and White-chinned Petrel Procellaria aequinoctialis , and on fishing effort in two types of fisheries (characterised by low or high-bycatch rates), to model the associations with environmental variables (bathymetry, chlorophyll-a concentration, sea surface temperature and wind speed) through ensemble Species Distribution Models. We then project these distributions according to four climate change scenarios built by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change for 2050 and 2100. The resulting projections were consistent across scenarios, indicating that there is a strong likelihood of poleward shifts in distribution of seabirds, and several range contractions (resulting from a shift in the northern, but no change in the southern limit of the range in four species). Current trends for southerly shifts in fisheries distributions are also set to continue under these climate change scenarios at least until 2100; some of these may reflect habitat loss for target species that are already over-fished. It is of particular concern that a shift in the distribution of several highly threatened seabird species would increase their overlap with fisheries where there is a high-bycatch risk. Under such scenarios, the associated shifts in distribution of seabirds and increases in bycatch risk will require much-improved fisheries management in these sensitive areas to minimise impacts on populations in decline.


Link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 02590/full
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Michael Szabo
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Warming oceans could put seabirds out of sync with prey

Postby Michael Szabo » Sat Apr 07, 2018 9:30 am

Seabirds may struggle to find food for their chicks because they are unable to shift their breeding seasons as the climate warms, a new study published in Nature Climate Change this week suggests. Rising sea temperatures in coming decades could create a mismatch between breeding periods and times when prey is most plentiful, researchers say. The findings suggest that if prey species continue to shift their breeding seasons forward – as previous studies have shown in some regions – it could further threaten the survival of vulnerable seabirds such as albatrosses and puffins.

A team from British Antarctic Survey along with colleagues at the University of Edinburgh and Centre for Ecology & Hydrology studied data on the breeding patterns of 62 seabird species between 1952 and 2016, as sea surface temperatures rose sharply. They found that seabirds have not altered their breeding times in response to rising temperatures. Previous research has shown however that climate change has brought forward when many prey species – including squid, shrimp and small fish – reproduce. Seabirds have much longer lifespans than their prey and do not reproduce until they are a few years old, which means it takes them many more generations to adapt, researchers say.

The team assessed 145 bird populations at 60 locations across every continent. These included the British Antarctic Survey's sub-Antarctic Bird Island Research Station and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology's field site on the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth. The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change this week (2 April 2018), received funding from the Natural Environment Research Council. Lead author Katharine Keogan, at the University of Edinburgh's School of Biological Sciences, said: "Many plants and animals now breed earlier than in previous decades, so our finding that seabirds haven't responded to changing environments is really surprising."

Dr. Sue Lewis, of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, said: "This collaboration was a global team effort, bringing together many of the world's seabird scientists and the data they have spent many years collecting. Uniting these studies has allowed us to draw powerful conclusions about the climate response of one of the most vulnerable bird groups on the planet."

Link to paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0115-z
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Michael Szabo
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World's largest King Penguin colony has declined by 90% over 3 decades

Postby Michael Szabo » Tue Jul 31, 2018 3:43 pm

The planet’s largest colony of king penguins has declined by nearly 90% in three decades, researchers have warned. The last time scientists set foot on France’s remote Île aux Cochons – roughly half way between the tip of Africa and Antarctica – the island was blanketed by 2m of the penguins, which stand about a metre tall. But recent satellite images and photos taken from helicopters show the population has collapsed, with barely 200,000 remaining, according to a study published in Antarctic Science.

Link to story: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... ined-by-90
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