Brad Cardinale, School of Natural Resources and Environment's associate professor and director of the school's conservation ecology program recently had an opinion piece about biodiversity and its impact on humanity published in the professional magazine, The Scientist.
Cardinale focuses on increasing evidence that suggests that loss of the Earth's biological diversity will compromise our planet's ability to provide the goods and services societies need to prosper.
Twenty years after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, 17 prominent ecologists are calling for renewed international efforts to curb the loss of biological diversity, which is compromising nature's ability to provide goods and services essential for human well-being. Over the past two decades, strong scientific evidence has emerged showing that loss of the world's biological diversity reduces the productivity and sustainability of natural ecosystems and decreases their ability to provide society with goods and services like food, wood, fodder, fertile soils, and protection from pests and disease, according to an international team of ecologists led by School of Natural Resources and Environment Associate Professor Bradley Cardinale.
Loss of biodiversity appears to impact ecosystems as much as climate change, pollution and other major forms of environmental stress, according to a new study from an international research team that includes SNRE Assistant Professor Bradley J. Cardinale. The study, published today, is the first comprehensive effort to directly compare the impacts of biological diversity loss to the anticipated effects of a host of other human-caused environmental changes. The results highlight the need for stronger local, national and international efforts to protect biodiversity and the benefits it provides, according to the researchers, based at nine institutions in the United States, Canada and Sweden. (VIEW IMAGES OF SCIENTISTS AT WORK)
The federal government should launch a series of efforts to assess thoroughly the condition of U.S. ecosystems and the social and economic value of the services those ecosystems provide, according to a new report by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Biologically diverse streams are better at cleaning up pollutants than less rich waterways, and a University of Michigan ecologist says he has uncovered the long-sought mechanism that explains why this is so. Bradley Cardinale used 150 miniature model streams, which use recirculating water in flumes to mimic the variety of flow conditions found in natural streams. He grew between one and eight species of algae in each of the mini-streams, then measured each algae community's ability to soak up nitrate, a nitrogen compound that is a nutrient pollutant of global concern.
SNRE Dean Rosina M. Bierbaum co-chaired a Working Group on Biodiversity Preservation and Ecosystem Sustainability, which has submitted its report titled "Sustaining Environmental Capital: Protecting Society and the Economy." The report states that the grand challenge is in maintaining ecosystems to assure the continued flow of ecosystem services, while also meeting society's demands for those services. "We need to view ecosystems comprehensively if we are to sustain the ecosystems that sustain us," the report states.
Three SNRE Ph.D. students—Irem Daloglu, Dan Miller and Baruani Mshale—have received fellowships from U-M's Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute.
A wave of reptile extinctions on the Greek islands over the past 15,000 years may offer a preview of the way plants and animals will respond as the world rapidly warms due to human-caused climate change, according to SNRE Associate Professor Johannes Foufopoulos and his colleagues. As the climate warmed at the tail end of the last ice age, sea levels rose and formed scores of Aegean islands that had formerly been part of the Greek mainland. At the same time, cool and moist forested areas dwindled as aridity spread through the region.
Jackie Turner, a U-M undergraduate with a double major in the Program in the Environment (PitE) and Screen Arts and Cultures, found that her interests in environment, sustainability, developing nations and documentary filmmaking converged when she traveled to Mpala, a 48,000-acre wildlife conservancy and biodiversity research center in Kenya, as part of a class taught by SNRE professors Rebecca Hardin and Johannes Foufopoulos.