So for the past several class periods, besides working on our storyboard projects, our topic of discussion was climate change and what that means, more specifically how it affects the oceans and the shores with rising sea levels. We’ve talked about how climate change can impact the environment and us, but we haven’t really discussed the impact global warming has on organisms other than human beings, especially those of the aquatic environment. This article discusses salmon and how the warming of bodies of water has impacted its ecological standing in certain ways.
Environments are changing due to temperatures rising and it impacts organisms who thrive in certain environments over others. For example, salmon thrive in cold waters. Thus, the warming of water poses a problem to the community of salmon living in waters that are getting warmer. Migrations of salmon have changed so that new colder environments are now increasing in populations of salmon. This can have potentially drastic changes because the ecology of the environment is shifted when there is a shift in the population of organisms. Introducing new organisms can cause an unbalance in the relationships between organisms already present.
There were talks human intervention to make sure there are no harmful effects of new salmon migration patterns. Previous human intervention in the form of hatcheries have wiped away the diversity within salmon making them all uniform and unable to adapt to a new environment. So human intervention may have only limited results.
A common theme I have noticed is that we are always trying to fix the problems we have caused. A salmon expert in this article says that “we’re doing a lot of the easy things, and they’re great, but they’re not enough. It’s always a question about how catch up with climate change but as the article says, how far can we go? I guess one thing to keep in the back of ours minds is how much can we do to prevent a global event?
“A common theme I have noticed is that we are always trying to fix the problems we have caused.”
Good observation, but I would say that it goes beyond that even. We always seem to create new problems whenever we try to fix existing problems. Often our solutions are accompanied by unintended consequences, which could be attributed to lack of foresight or failure to see beyond our noses.
I loved the link you choose to share. I agree that a common theme in this years seminar is that we are trying to fix the problems we have caused. I also like that it has not only been about cleaning the mess we have made, but also about taking preventative measures. You ask an interesting question at the end of your response that makes me feel small. It is all about doing the most we can do and to the best of our capacity, but sometimes it isn’t enough.