Janice Wormworth's Blog, page 2
May 30, 2013
New Australia-wide study details climate change risks, costs to birds
The risk of climate change to Australian birds and the cost of helping them adapt are the focus of a new report, the first of its kind to assess all birds across a whole continent.
Almost 400 species or subspecies of Australian birds are expected to be highly exposed or highly sensitive to climate change, the study finds, and the cost of helping these birds adapt would be $18.8 million per year, or a total of $941 million over 50 years.
As one measure of the risk, the authors studied how climat...
February 11, 2013
Asian birds’ fate under climate change focus of new study
Helping to fill a major knowledge gap on Asian birds, a new study finds that many species in this region would suffer under climate change, which would force them to shift their ranges to keep up. It also highlights the need to strengthen and adapt conservation efforts to sustain bird populations.
The study explores climate change impacts on 370 Asian bird species of conservation concern within two Asian biodiversity hotspots: the Eastern Himalaya and Lower Mekong. The two hotspots encompass p...
September 25, 2012
New insights on climate change risk to emperor penguins
A recent study on emperor penguins atTerre Adélie provides more evidence that global warming will be bad news for this species over the long term.
To provide projections of the penguins’ possible fate, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution biologistStéphanie Jenouvrier and her colleagues linked a mathematical models of emperor population dynamic linked to scenarios of possible future changes in sea ice calculated using IPCC climate models.
WHOI biologist Stephanie Jenouvrier readies an Emperor p...
May 3, 2012
U of Utah writes about Cagan’s conservation work
Continuum, the magazine for the University of Utah, wrote this in-depth article about Cagan’s research and conservation work. It covers vulture restaurants, the quest to sight all 10,000 bird species, and the pursuit of the bald ibis in Ethiopia — among other things!
Tracking Winged Sentinels: Continuum, by Elaine Jarvik
April 22, 2012
Satellites make possible more accurate count of emperors
Emperor colony near Halley Bay. Image credit: DigitalGlobe
Emperors are one of the penguin species thought to be at long-term risk from climate change. But the remoteness and hostility of their environment, along with their habit of breeding during the Antarctic winter, makes study difficult.
A major breakthrough is a new method of counting the penguins from space, made possible by scientists from the British Antarctic Survey, University of Minnesota/National Science Foundation, Scripps Institu...
Winged Sentinels gets positive review in “Nature”
It recently came to our attention that the journal Nature provided the following review of our book:
“This book is richly illustrated with examples of how birds are responding to climate change, and argues that these represent early warning signs that we would do well to heed. The authors, science writer Janice Wormworth and biologist Çağan Şekercioğlu, provide fascinating insights into the many ways that climate change is impacting birdlife and what we can do to help them adapt.”
See:
Nature, A...
February 16, 2012
Climate change threatens tropical birds
Venezuela's scissor-tailed hummingbird has an existing habitat of less than 100 square miles of humid mountain forest. It is currently considered threatened with extinction, and computer models indicate this species will be among the most likely to go extinct by the end of the century if global warming continues. Image credit: Cagan Sekercioglu, University of Utah
A new paper on tropical birds and climate change by Çağan Şekercioğlu, Richard Primack of Boston University, and Janice Wormworth w...
February 7, 2012
Penguins as indicators of change in Antarctica
In Winged Sentinels we covered the effects of climate change on Antarctic penguins. This new Australian television report gives a look at how fluctuating penguin numbers may be linked to climate change, along with other types of environmental change:
ABC 7:30 Report: Penguins Flag Changes in Antarctic Environment
December 29, 2011
Winged Sentinels tops list for NHBS Books of the Year
Each year the Natural History Book Store puts together a list of their highlights, and Winged Sentinels tops their 2011 list of “ten books (that) stand out as being uniquely interesting, original and informative, providing new angles on old topics and furthering fields of study into new areas.”
December 22, 2011
Community-based bird monitoring in the tropics
This critically endangered bald ibis was satellite tagged in the Syrian desert and traced by Cagan and researchers from the Ethiopian Wildlife and Natural History Society to a remote Ethiopian location. Image © Cagan Sekercioglu.
Cagan’s new Biological Conservation paper highlights the importance of tackling major knowledge gaps on birds in the tropics. Although most species are found in the tropics, little research or monitoring is done there. Yet the need for monitoring and research on tropi...
