ENWC201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Intertidal Zone, Thermal Expansion, Introduced Species

• School: University of Delaware
• Department: Entomology and Wildlife Conservation
• Course: ENWC201
• Professor: Mc Carthy Kyle

Document Summary

Climate change: change, sea level - increases. 1. ice melting contributes to water in ocean. 2. thermal expansion: at least 26-82 cm (10 in to 2 ft 8 in) rise depending on locality (could be much higher) Impacts: higher acidity binds with freely available nutrients in ocean (calcium) (1) decrease in population of species that have a lot of calcium in their bodies. Thursday, october 29, 2015: where will we end up, cretaceous 80 million years long when carbon was slowly deposited, using carbon extremely fast b) if species can"t adapt as fast as changing conditions they go extinct. Extinction: anthropogenic causes of extinction - over time more causes as human population has grown, overexploitation, habitat degradation. Cascade effect: some extinctions lead to others, changes to food web. !2: ex: sea otters exploited for fur - local extinction off pacific coast caused explosion of sea urchin population which wiped out the kelp population; without food source, sea.