ecosystems and how ecosystems can be impacted by changes in their environment. This right

here is a picture of some contrails that are created. Contrail are created when jets fly

over an area. Pollutants coming from the combustion of the jet fuel will actual have water vapor

adhere to it. And so you get the creation of a man-made cloud. And you can see how many

of these contrails are created. This is a satellite image over Nova Scotia. And these

are all the contrails that are created in a typical day. And so we're actually making

clouds. Now what do those clouds do? Clouds will actually hold heat in. And so in Montana,

when it's going to be a clear night I know that in the winter especially like now, it's

going to get really, really cold at night. Because the clouds aren't going to hold in

that heat. And so how could we ever study how much of an impact are we having on the

weather? Well we'd have to have a time when there are no jets flying. And when would that

happen? Well it's only happened really once. After 9/11 we shut down jet traffic in the

United States for a 3 day period. And so scientists were able to observe that three day period

and compare it to the days proceeding it, days after that. And we were able to find

that we had roughly a 1 degree Celsius change on the weather. Just during that one day period.

And weather remember over a long term is called climate. And so we can impact ecosystems just

by changing the climate. So basically in this podcast I'm going to talk about how ecosystems

can be impacted by changes in their environment. Some of those are human changes. And of course

I'm going to talk about global warming or climate change. We could also have geologic

changes. An example I'll give you is continental drift. And then finally we could have meteorological

changes. Meteorological just simply means weather changes. And so an example I'll talk

about is el Nino. Or warming of the oceans and how that's actually impacting ecosystems

on our planet. So let's start with global warming. This is a famous map. It basically

compares the average temperature from 1950 to 1981. So a 30 year period to the ten year

period that we're just finishing. And basically anything on the map that's red means that

it got warmer. Anything on the map that's blue, which I can find a little bit down here,

means it got cooler. And then the grey areas means we didn't get much data from that. And

so you can see that there's a huge warming over the last decade compared to the 50s to

1980. And so basically there's no credible scientist out there that's saying that there's

not global warming. And there's no credible scientist out there who's saying humans aren't

having an impact on that. And so a couple of examples of feedback loops, because that's

again one of our major themes, this would be in the permafrost. So as permafrost starts

to melt it gives off a methane gas. Methane gas is a really good green house gas. And

so that's going to increase the temperature through the green house effect. Which is going

to warm the permafrost. Which is going to create more methane gas. And so you know we

call that a positive feedback loop. Now some of that heat is going to dissipate from the

arctic. And so this is not really a localized phenomena. But it is going to increase global

warming. That's why were going to see an increase over the next 100 years. One that's more global

would be the increase that we're seeing in water vapor. And so this is from 1980 to 2004.

This is just looking at the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. And you can see that

we're seeing an increase in the amount of water vapor. What is that H20 going to do

in the atmosphere? Well, it's going to increase the temperature. It's going to increase the

temperature which creates more water vapor which is going to increase the temperature.

And so basically our temperature is being increased by changes that we're having on

our planet. Because it's not just weather, excuse me, it's not just water and methane,

it's going to be carbon dioxide that we're putting into the atmosphere. And other green

house gases that are increasing the temperature. And it'll take awhile for that to actually

take off. And we're starting to experience that right now. How much of an impact is it

going to have on ecosystems? Well it's first of all going to effect ecosystems that are

more susceptible to changes in temperature. And so this is data that I got from the intergovernmental

panel on climate change. So it's basically almost 200 countries take all their data.

They compile it together. And they're looking at how changes in the temperature are going

to effect our planet. Now they're not necessarily looking at ecosystems. But that's a part of

the study that they did. And basically what they predicted is if we see 1/2 of a degree

of Celsius change over the next 100 years, we're going to have damage to the coral reefs

and the arctic ecosystems. Now of course we're going to impact the arctic ecosystems more

than those closer we'll say to the equator, because any warming is going to change that

climate there. And so it's going to impact species that have evolved to live in a cold

area. An example could be like the polar bears. Now coral reefs are damaged in a different

way. Let me click to the next slide. If we see a 1 degree change, all the coral reefs

will become bleached. So basically a coral is made up of two things. You have a coral

which is essentially an animal. And then you have an algae that lives mutualistically with

them. And so basically the coral will extrude that algae so they become bleached. And they

can't use the photosynthetic features of the algae anymore. And so it's a defense mechanism

to changes in the temperature. That's why they will be impacted. But if we see a 1 degree

change they're predicting we'll see 10% of the global ecosystems will be transformed.

And so basically what's going to happen is as we increase temperature, it's going to

get warmer and warmer and warmer. And so it's going to impact these areas near the arctic

more than those areas near the equator as we warm up the temperature. Now it's happening

so quickly that species who normally could evolve to changes like that aren't able to

evolve quickly enough. And so they're going to be impacted by that. So if we get a 2 degree

change over the next 100 years we'll see mass mortality in the coral reefs. 1/6 of all ecosystems

will be transformed. Then this is where it gets a little bit scary. A fourth of all species

will be committed to extinction. It doesn't mean that they necessarily will go extinct,

but they will be headed down a pathway of extinction. And so what is extinction? It

means when all the organisms of a specific species are gone from our planet. The opposite

of that is an extant species is one that's around today. And so just a 2 degree change

could have huge impacts on that. And they predicted a 3 degree change could get a third

of all species on our planet going extinct. And so when you hear numbers about this being

the greatest extinction that we've ever had, this man-made extinction, it's because we

are getting changes in the temperature. And those global changes in the temperature are

going to impact ecosystems and thereby impact species in that area. They also predict that

half of all nature preserves ail be unable to meet their conservation objectives. So

this is Pelican Island, one of the first national refuges that we have in the United States.

And all of these are going to be impacted by changes in temperature. And the reason

why is that species simply can't evolve quickly enough to changes that are 3 degree changes

over 100 year period. And so those are going to be man-made changes. But there have also

been global changes not caused by man over time. One great example of that would be continental

drift. All the continents on our planet, remember, used to be organized into one super continent

called Pangea. Pangea broke apart into two subcontinents. We had, this is Gondwanaland

or Gondwana. And then we had Laurasia in the north. And so basically when they figured

this out, they looked at fossils and where fossils were found. And so we had fossils,

not only did the continents fit together, but those continents had fossils that would

move throughout all of them. So it was a good way to show, scientists show, that the continents

had actually drifted apart. But basically that drifting has caused biogeographical changes,

or changes in the life that are living on those planets. And so we can look at where

species are found. And we can predict how those ecosystems had changed over time. Or

we can at least go back and look through the evidence and figure out what happened over

time. Example could be in the mammals or the marsupial mammals. So basically there are

three types of mammals. You've got the egg-laying mammals. An example would be the platypus.

You have the marsupial mammals. Example would be like the kangaroo. And then you have the

placental mammals. Which is essentially everything that you think of as a mammal. And so if you

think about where are the marsupials found on our planet, well almost all of the marsupials

you can think of are found Australia. So Koala Bear is an example of that. But we also have

marsupials in South America. And we have one marsupial in North America. This is the possum.

And so how did marsupials get where they were? Well basically what happened is we had marsupials

in Gondwana. So we had them in Antarctica. We had them in Australia, and we had some

of them in South America. Scientists don't think we had movement into Africa at all.

So we had marsupials that are all across here. And so basically as those continents drifted,

Antarctica got so cold that the ecosystem changes so much that all the marsupials died

off there. We had the marsupials here in Australia that were adrift. So we didn't have the placental

mammals there. And then we had those in South America. Now South America eventually drifted

into North America. And we had the movement of some of those marsupial mammals into North

America, but mostly we had the movement of all the placental mammals down. So we had

this battle of the mammals. And so basically as continents drift about, they're going to

change their climate. And thereby they're going to change the ecosystems that they have.

Now the last and the third type is how meteorological changes can actually impact ecosystems. And

so this is el Nino. El Nino happens somewhere between every two to seven years. It kind

of centers around 5 years. And basically what'll happen is you'll have a warming of these waters

in the Pacific. So along the coast of South America. So you get a warming in this area.

And then it'll kind of go away. And then we have la Nina. And then we'll have el Nino.

And so we have these changes of the temperatures. And so basically that's going to impact the

ecosystems during those time periods. And so this is a marine iguana. It's really cool

kind of an animal. Basically what it'll do is it'll sit on land and it'll get warmed

up. They live the Galapagos Islands which are going to be right down here. You could

imagine in the middle of el Nino. And so basically what they do is they will feed on algae underwater.

So they swim down under the water. They feed on algae. They come back up to the surface.

They are cold blooded so they have to warm up their bodies so they can digest that food.

Then they go down again. Get algae. Really cool looking creature. Look kind of prehistoric.

But basically what happens to them during el Nino is that most of the land will actually

do well, because we're going to warm up the temperature. We get more precipitation. So

a lot of the plants are going to do well. But the algae that live under water are going

to be impacted by that increase. So what does that do? Well there is less algae. Now the

marine iguanas, when they go down, aren't going to find as much algae. And so they're

going to be impacted by that. Or the ecosystem will be impacted by that. And so scientists

found that you see a 20% decrease in the length of iguanas during an el Nino period. Now why

is that? Well there are two reasons. Number one is that they'll actually shrink their

body in response to el Nino. So their bones will actually get shorter. Which is crazy.

If you think about what if I were to get 20% shorter when it gets just a little bit warmer?

And so there's a stress hormone that's released that actually making their bones short. Which

is pretty cool. But there's also selection going on. In other words if your a big marine

iguana, you're going to have to dive deeper to find algae. You're going to have to come

back on land. It's going to take you longer for your body to warm up. So you can actually

digest the food so you can go back down again. And so now we see selective pressure on the

larger marine iguanas. And so we're going to see a movement towards smaller body size.

And so again, just simple changes in the temperature can have huge impacts on an ecosystem. And

even though we might think we're having small impacts on our climate, humans are having

great impacts on our climate which is going to kind of feedback out of control over the

next hundred years. And we're going to see changes in the environment. But hopefully

we can mediate some of that just through eduction. And so I hope that's helpful. }