1 / 9

Climate Change and Wetlands

Climate Change and Wetlands. Chapter 10. Climate change facts. Surface temperature has increased .74 degrees celsuis (about 1.65 degrees farenheit . Estimated 10% decrease in snow cover Sea levels rose by 17 cm during the last 100 years. 3.1 mm average per year since 1993

royce
Download Presentation

Climate Change and Wetlands

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Climate Change and Wetlands Chapter 10

  2. Climate change facts • Surface temperature has increased .74 degrees celsuis (about 1.65 degrees farenheit. • Estimated 10% decrease in snow cover • Sea levels rose by 17 cm during the last 100 years. • 3.1 mm average per year since 1993 • Sea ice has decreased by 2.7% per decade for the last 3 decades.

  3. Possible causes • Atmospheric carbon absorbs certain wavelenghts of sunlight thus heating the atmosphere. • Most commonly from CO2 emissions, this might come from fossil fuel burning. • Estimated 1850 levels=280 ppm. 2005 levels 379 ppm • Deforestation exacerbates this problem.

  4. Causes, con’t • Methane gas- too many cows ( and people like you) farting. • 700 ppb preindustrial to 1775 ppb today. • Wetlands are a source of methane gas, but their area has decreased by half during this same time. • That being said, methane gas is 20 times more effective as a greenhouse gas than carbon dixoide and wetlands produce about 20% of the total methane emissions.

  5. Nitrous oxide • Nitrous oxide emissions come from wetlands due to dentrification and nitrification • Also Vin Diesel and his posse.

  6. Wetlands affect on carbon • Wetlands, although implicated a bit in emission, actually sequester carbon from the atmosphere. • Plant life, in general, uses carbon dioxide as the principal component for glucose production. • Of the total carbon stored in the earth’s soil, about 20-30 percent is stored in wetlands.

  7. Peat • Until recently, peat had been a common fuel source in many countries, it is still used in a few. • Peat burning and wetland draining could release anywhere from 45 to 89% of the sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere. • However, increased temperatures would cause peatlands to be more productive and thus more efficiently sequester carbon dixoide.

  8. Climate Change Effects on Wetlands • Estimated 50-200 cm water rise over the next century. • At 100 cm sea level rise, over half the wetlands in the world would be threatened. • New Orleans areas would be affected by as soon as 2050-2060. • Efforts to protect wetlands in developed countries (like we do in NO) will exacerbate the problem.

More Related