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The
biodiversity and the climatic change The World, Natura supplement, 10 of November of 2007 And if the climatic change is the maximum preoccupation at the present time, another very important question at international level also exists: it is the fight by the resources of the two operated zones less until the present time by the human species, the Artic and the Antarctic. If the U.S.A.,
Canada, Denmark, Norway and Russia have
initiated this same summer the dangerous race by the existing vindication
of the zones of commercial operation of hydrocarbons and other raw materials
in the Glacial ocean Artic, the United Kingdom has begun to investigate the
possibility of operating fossil fuels of the marine bottoms of the Antarctic.
This last situation can give rise to the loss of the biodiversity that exists
in those unexplored zones or little occupied until now by the human species.
This one is the alert message that has sent to Peter B. Reich, university
professor of Ecology and Forest Physiology of the 1ª) the plants could arrive at their limit as carbon drains with the abrupt increase of CO2 in the atmosphere; this increase is specially serious in the case of fires, that they release to the abundant atmosphere CO2 that took stored decades in biomass form. It does not have necessarily to take to us to plant trees in all the surface of the planet, since it is not possible and in addition the trees at the beginning of his growth there are moments at which they have a neutral balance with respect to the CO2 emission; it would be much more important avoiding to cut the old trees that suppose a great amount of stored CO2. 2ª) a factor that can be important at the time of knowing if the plants will manage to maintain their paper of important carbon drains is the diversity of the forest ecosystems. Thus, the loss of biodiversity of these ecosystems will possibly cause a diminution of its capacity to absorb CO2.
Nitrogen is a fundamental element at the time of maximizing the amount of
carbon that the forests are able to extract of the atmosphere. If it is
little in the zones where the forests predominate, being however abundant where
these last ones are scarce as it is the case of the of the wooded zones in its assignment of absorption of atmospheric CO2 will not be able to be arrived at the maxim. Thus, today one knows that the oceanic and terrestrial ecosystems restrain 50% of the global heating due to the gas discharges of effect conservatory, but in fact it is not known with certainty until where they can arrive, if until 55% or more, being this question an important incognito to keep awake for really knowing what to rely to us. As an example of two critic situations of the present time we displayed the two photos of down, each one significant of impacts in the biodiversity of the planet.
British ship patrolling the Glacial ocean Antarctic (1988). /AP
A tawny vulture, Gyps fulvus, released by
naturalists in the Basque Country. /Julio Carlos |
