Researchers from Aarhus University (Denmark) have produced the first evidence of correlation between animal survival potential and climate change. The research was reviewed at the Alpha Galileo web site on October 7. 2011.
The basis of the research was an examination of the survival rate of fish, birds, and mammals in the last great climate change event on Earth. The Last Glacial Maximum occurred about 21,000 years ago and was found to be responsible for the dispersal of life forms on Earth today.
The researchers used fossil evidence and computer simulations to analyze the effect of colder temperatures on life on earth and to discern how the life forms coped with an extreme climate change.
The concept developed is called required migration rate and is a function of the speed that an animal can travel and the terrain the animal must cross. Slower traveling animals tend to fare poorly in climate change. The variability of temperature with altitude is also a factor in determining a species chances of survival during a period of extreme climate change.
This is the first fact based analysis of its kind and the researchers hope to use their findings to predict animal survival in the present period of climate change.
The paper "The influence of Late Quaternary climate-change velocity on species endemism" is the combined effort of postdoctoral researcher Brody Sandel at Aarhus University, Professor Lars Arge with the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Massive Data Algorithmics (MADALGO) and Aarhus University, Professor Jens-Christian Svenning at Aarhus University, and others.
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