Group Members: Justin Bischof, Demir McRae, and Weihang Ke

Habeeb, Dana, Jason Vargo, and Brian Stone. 2015. “Rising Heat Wave Trends in Large U.S. Cities.” Natural Hazards 76, no. 3: 1651-1655. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-014-1563-z.

Natural Hazards is the official journal for the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards.  As a result, this article is academic in nature and peer-reviewed. The article analyzes the trends of heat waves in U.S. cities over time and the effects it has on the population of these cities.  Although it does not directly address the species found in New York City parks, which is the population our group plans on examining, it does provide insight into possible impacts climate change has on the human population.  It is significant to note that these effects of climate change may very well be felt by species of NYC parks, perhaps even more so than their human counterparts because, naturally, these species lack air conditioning during the hot summer months.  Moreover, the trends analyzed in this article will provide our group with vital information on the of rising temperatures in general. Therefore, it is crucial our group uses this information in our Bioblitz research project.

Hartig, Ellen, Vivien Gornitz, Alexander Kolker, Frederick Mushacke, and David Fallon. 2002. “Anthropogenic and Climate-Change Impacts on Salt Marshes of Jamaica Bay, New York City.” Wetlands 22, no. 1: 71-89. https://doi.org/10.1672/0277-5212(2002)022[0071:AACCIO]2.0.CO;2.

The Wetlands journal is the official scholarly journal of the Society of Wetland Scientists.  This is a peer-reviewed academic journal that has been cited numerous times on similar subjects.  Although the article cited is from 2002, it still provides accurate and imperative information about the negative effects of climate change: namely, the deterioration of wetlands, which provide a habitat for countless species in New York City and throughout the world.  The authors worked in tandem with the Society of Wetland Scientists to outline field studies conducted to determine how quickly these wetlands have been deteriorating. The article itself provides our group with relevant information, as the worsening conditions of the wetlands in New York City is directly correlated with both a declining diversity of species as well as a rising average temperature.

Savage, Amy, Elsa Youngsteadt, Andrew Ernst, Shelby Powers, Robert Dunn, and Steven Frank. 2017. “Homogenizing an Urban Habitat Mosaic: Arthropod Diversity Declines in New York City Parks After Super Storm Sandy.” ESA Journal of Ecological Applications 28, no. 1: 225-236. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.1643.

The ESA Journal of Ecological Applications is a credible, peer-reviewed academic journal that will provide my group with necessary information about the current and potential effects climate change has on the species living in New York City parks.  This article in particular provides the applicable information our group can use to demonstrate the harmful effects of global warming. Specifically, this article focuses on how hurricanes and other superstorms may negatively impact species in New York City.  The article claims these storms—which have been proven to be more and more frequent as a result of climate change—quickly diminish the species diversity in parks across the city. The authors provide accurate knowledge that our group will apply to our Bioblitz research project.

 

Hetem, Robyn S, Andrea Fuller, Shane K Maloney, Duncan Mitchell. “Responses of large mammals to climate change.” Temperature 1, no. 2(2014): 115-127

Temperature is a peer-reviewed physiological journal that has research papers on the interactions of living matter and temperature. This article talks about the response of mammals to climate change. The ways that animals survive is to evolve or adapt. Mammals, however, do not have the benefit of being able to rapidly adapt or evolve in order to survive. Therefore, the appropriate response for mammals os to leave certain environments with constantly changing climates.

 

Weins, John J. “Climate-Related Local Extinctions Are Already Widespread among Plant and Animal Species.” PLoS Biology 14, no. 12(2016): doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2001104

This article speaks about linking local extinction to climate changes. We can use this information to see whether certain species became non-existent over time. This article doesn’t specifically cover New York, but we can use the information to our advantage. It can provide a possible explanation for a specific result that we find through our data.

 

Nogues-Bravo, David, Francisco Rodriguez-Sanchez, Luisa Orsini, Erik de Boer, Roland Jansson, Helene Morlon, Damien A. Fordham, Stephen T. Jackson. “Cracking the Code of Biodiversity Responses to Past Climate Change.” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 33, no. 10(2018): 765-776, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2018.07.005

This article talks about trying to find how species and ecosystems will react to future climate change by linking it to past changes in climate. There is some information out there, but there are still gaps in time. We can use this information to see if a change in the biodiversity is similar to one before and provide an explanation as to why the change in biodiversity would occur. Correlation does not equal causation, so using this information would be useful to link climate change and the respective changes in biodiversity.

 

Javeline, Debra, Jessica J. Hellmann, Rodrigo Castro Cornejo, Gregory Shufeldt. 2013. “Expert Opinion on Climate Change and Threats to Biodiversity”. August 1. BioScience, Volume 63, Issue 8, Pages 666-673. https://doi.org/10.1525/bio.2013.63.8.9

The authors of this academic paper all have some scientific backgrounds, especially in topics related to climate change. For instance, Debra Javeline has been interested in researching environmental politics and climate change, and she has published articles such as “Expert Opinion on Extinction Risk and Climate Change Adaptation”, proving her authority in writing this paper. On the other hand, Jessica J. Hellmann also has expertise on global change biology, including diagnosis of ecological impacts of climate change. This publishing journal BioScience is a peer-reviewed journal that focuses its papers mostly on biology, public policy, and education. In this paper, the authors conducted a research by interviewing knowledgeable environmental biologists and following some steps of the scientific method. Initially, by observing the temperature gradually rising, they were questioning what the ecological consequences would be due to climate change. Then, a scientific inference was made stating that the larger temperature increases, higher percentages of species extinctions. At a later stage, they even interviewed 2329 scientists consulting with their opinions on the topic of global warming. Indeed, this article mostly concentrates on describing and comparing the surveys conducted to people with different levels of scientific expertise. Despite the fact that there isn’t so much of scientific jargons, it has lots of statistics which further explain the issue of temperature rising. Overall, even though it does not really aim at the parks in NYC, the phenomenon of global warming, as indicated by the term, is a global issue, and at least this paper provides us a general idea of how the biodiversity would be negatively impacted. We will be able to narrow it to NYC and explore more as we research more.

Bellard, Céline, Cleo Bertelsmeier, Paul Leadley, Wilfried Thuiller, and Franck Courchamp. 2012. “Impacts of Climate Change on the Future of Biodiversity”. PMC. January 18.  doi: [10.1111/j.1461–0248.2011.01736.x]

PMC is a journal literature which mostly focuses on articles of biomedical and life sciences. It is a section within the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine, a very reputable and credible organization. Generally, this article discusses the relationship between temperature rising and the biodiversity in our ecosystem. Indeed, climate change can negatively affect the entire ecosystem because it decreases the diversity of population due to the migration. It also includes some charts and graphs to further support their points that climate change would eventually lead to the extinction of species. Additionally, it also touches upon on how the dynamics of metapopulation would be impacted by such phenomenon because metapopulation dynamics also play a role in determining the way species are distributed. Throughout the article, it uses lots of scientific terms and citation to give credit to the authors who come up with the assertions. Therefore, it is such a very reliable source that provides our group with lots of precious information on our topic.

Carey, Cynthia. 2009. “The Impacts of Climate Change on the Annual Cycles of Birds” PMC. November 27. doi: [10.1098/rstb.2009.0182]

Cynthia Carey, the author, is a professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology at the University of Colorado. In this article, he explains that climate change is a problem caused by human being, destroying the entire global ecosystem. Scientists predict that after several decades, existing animals and plant species would become extinct. This is a powerful sentence that appeals to human asking them to better protect the Earth by avoiding activities such as deforestation, burning fossil fuels, etc. Some of the data in this article are primary, which have been obtained by actually going out and observing the growth of tree rings, the core through glaciers, and sediment samples from oceans. This article also includes a thorough analysis of the observation that lists all the possible outcomes that come along with global warming.