Discussion ESP 10D

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Announcements

• Discussion ESP 10D
• A science article
• Practice Quiz Questions --posted
• Lecture notes
• Last years before lecture (ppt, pdf)
• Learning objectives sample questions
• Appendix

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YOU ARE HERE
Davis, CA
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Federal Rulings the extremes

• Village of Euclid, Ohio v Ambler Realty 1926
• Upheld constitutionality of zoning
• 1987 cases
• First English Evangelical Lutheran Church of
  Glendale vs Los Angeles County
• Nollan vs California Coastal Commission
• Both Supreme Court Decisions
• Both upheld that restrictions to the use of
  privately held land can constitute taking the
  land
• The landowner is entitled to compensation

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Environmental groups are becoming larger, more
diverse, and better prepared to engage in local
land use issues
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Sacramento Bee
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LAW
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Case Law The Judicial Branch

• Most Environmental ISSUES end up in court
• Cause of Action something illegal is alleged
• Legal standing - whether a litigant has the right
  to initiate an action
• Criminal law e.g., EPA Office of Criminal
  Investigation
• Civil law - civil cases, SLAPP suits
• Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation

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The Legal branch

• Federal, State Courts
• Federal courts interpret federal laws
• State courts interpret state laws
• Federal trial courts, district appellate courts
  to the Supreme Court
• Interprets the laws in the specific
• Requires a case example to test the validity of a
  law

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The courts as the environmental battlefield

• Given low specificity of congressional laws, the
  courts interpret the intent of Congress.
• Courts are responsive, not proactive
• Courts invite scientists to provide expert
  testimony.
• Faith in the testimony of experts is open to
  question, but precedence is important

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Summary

• Three branches of the government each has a
  different means to contribute to environmental
  protection (or lack thereof)
• Each has limits to expertise as well as
  jurisdiction
• Federal examples mostly have counterparts in
  states and some counterparts in local governments

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Summary

• Understanding who has jurisdiction is the first
  step in working toward changing environmental
  management.
• Counties control land planning in rural areas
• The state enforces Clean Air programs
• USFWS lists species as endangered
• Lobster vs Halibut where the resource is in the
  ocean dictates whether it is a state or federal
  problem

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International Treaties and Conventions
Policy Interlude International Environmental
Policy is Voluntary. One nation can not force
another to act in an environmentally responsible
manner
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FIVE GREAT THINGS TO DO THIS WEEK

• Investigate the face of endangered species.
• www.fws.gov/endangered/
• www.backfromthebrink.org/home.cfm
• www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14703890/
• www.cites.org/eng/resources/species.html
• Ice hockey season is underway! Are the Rangers as
  good as everyone has predicted/
• Go out to the footbridge over Hwy 113 and enjoy
  the thousands of crows coming into Davis at
  sunset
• Register to Vote
• Enjoy nearly the last Wednesday Picnic at the
  Farmers Market of 2006 (music!)

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Roadmap

• The value of natural environments.
• Clean water, clean air, soil building
• Recreation, sense of place,
• Convention for Biodiversity
• The value of species
• Foods, medicines, natural products
• Existence value of species
• Endangered Species Act, CITES

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Biodiversity more than the number of species
includes differences among species and how they
form ecological units at levels higher than
species
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Life on earth has changed both in the types of
plants and animals and their diversity
Number of families
Millions of years
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How Many Species Are There?
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How Many Species Are There?
15 million ?
30 million ?
3 million ?
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Taxonomic Estimates
The 15 Million Species Estimate
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Most species have low abundance or narrow
distributions
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Abundance
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1
Species Rank
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The consequence

• The nature of the evolution of diversity results
  in many small lineages with few species, and a
  few very diverse lineages.
• The nature of life in the environment results in
  many rare species and a few very common ones.
• Thus, conserving this diversity is inherently a
  large problem.

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Biodiversity Hotspots - endemic species
WHY ARE most of the worlds biodiversity
concentrated near the equator (tropical
rainforests, coral reefs), islands, coastal
areas, mountain tops?
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EnviroNews
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Investigating Endangered Species
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Terrestrial Biodiversity Hotspots of endemic
species
endemic restricted to a small region
1. Tropical latitudes 2. Coastal montane regions
with high habitat heterogeneity 3) Mediterranean
climatic regions
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Precious Heritage. 2000. Hotspots of diversity,
US
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Within California, urban areas contain a lot of
diversity
Schwartz et al 2002
Native Fish Species
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Geographical Patterns of Endangerment
California is a big participant (294 listings)
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Google News Endangered Species
Saturday, 115PM
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Candidate Species List--- No protection No funds
Wednesday The ESA
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Costa Rica, taxonomists identifying all insects
in the country
How do we benefit from biodiversity? Where do we
collect most of these species?
Food Drugs, Medicine Ecological benefits
Mangosteens, Indonesia
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80 of the world's population relies upon natural
medicinal products. Of the top 150 prescription
drugs used in the U.S., 118 originate from
natural sources 74 from plants, 18 from fungi,
5 from bacteria, and 3 from one vertebrate
(snake species). Nine of the top 10 drugs
originate from natural plant products. ---
http//www.actionbioscience.org/environment/esa.ht
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Valuing Biodiversity Aesthetic and cultural
benefits
Birdwatching and other wildlife
observation contribute more than 29 million each
year to the U.S. economy.
In addition, all the worlds major religions have
reaffirmed the ethical value of conserving
biological diversity.
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Ecosystem Values
Clean water, clean air, soil retention, natural
resource extraction, recreation value, etc, etc,
but also human disease mitigation
http//www.actionbioscience.org/environment/esa.ht
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What Threatens Biodiversity?

• Extinction - the elimination of a species
• Natural process - one species lost every 10 years
• Process been accelerated by human impacts on
  populations and ecosystems
• E.O. Wilson - we are currently losing thousands
  of species a year

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Current Extinction Rate Estimates
Is this too conservative and estimate? Certified
extinct is a very restrictive category. We had to
know enough to be convinced it was a species and
now know enough to be convinced that it is
extinct. Ivory-billed Woodpecker example
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Humans have a long history of negative impacts in
diversity
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Principal Drivers of Species Endangerment

• Habitat Loss / Degradation
• Invasive Species
• Pollution
• Population growth
• Over-exploitation
• HIPPO

From Wilcove et al.(1998)
CITES Focus
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1. Habitat Loss/ Degradation
Global warming Thomas et al. Nature 2004. 30
committed to extinction (problematic estimation,
likely to be off by a lot)
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2. Invasive Species
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CITESConvention on the International Trade in
Endangered Species
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Smuggling is happening all the time Protecting
biodiversity affects many industries.
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Making a difference. Small things add up.
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Today Chapters 3,4 and 5

• What is biodiversity?
• What forces create and destroy biodiversity?
• Does biodiversity change through time?
• How is biodiversity distributed?
• Does society benefit from biodiversity?
• What human impacts threaten biodiversity?
• How do we protect biodiversity?

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Learning objectives

• How do we define biodiversity and how is this
  different from species richness?
• How many species are there and how do we know
  this?
• Of what value are species to people what are the
  reasons for caring?
• What is the history of diversity through time
  (constant)?
• Where are the hotspots of biodiversity and why?
• What are the threats to biodiversity?

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Sample questions

• Which Statement is true.
• Among the 1.75 million described species,
  approximately half are insects
• Among the 15 million described species about half
  are insects
• Among the 1.75 million described species, about
  half are terrestrial plants.
• Among the 15 million described species, a small
  fraction (about 3) are vertebrates
• T/F. Most drugs used by people for medicine are
  based on chemicals first discovered in plants
• T/F. Mediterranean climatic regions are known for
  low diversity owing to the difficulty of species
  dealing with the seasonally dry period.
• Best estimates regarding the potential for global
  warming to drive extinctions suggests
• Warming will result in more species, owing to the
  fact that species diversity is higher in the
  tropics
• Warming is not, per se, a threat to species
  diversity, Habitat loss is.
• Warming is expected to increase extinction rates
  in many regions.
• Warming is expected to cause the extinction of
  upwards of 15 of all species.

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Appendix to lecture notes

• From here down are som eslides that cover how we
  estimate species richness, a few slides on
  phylogeny and the relatedness among species. I
  will talk about these things in lecture, but not
  show slides. These appendix slides are for you to
  look through in order to place this discussion in
  context.

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Classification a way of lumping diversity into
groups (bins)
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1) What is Biodiversity?
Life on earth can be arranged hierarchically from
atoms, through organisms and up to the biosphere
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Phylogenies A way to understand the evolution of
organisms and how they relate to one another,
based on shared traits and shared
genes Biodiversity has a pattern and a history
of shared inheritance
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Important points regarding species diversity

• We have only a rough estimate of species
  diversity
• Species are not distributed evenly taxonomically,
  geographically, or in abundance.
• All species go extinct sometime earth has had
  big extinction events before, but extinction rate
  is at an all-time high
• Rarity does not equal endangerment
• Extinction threat varies among taxa

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How many species are there?
Diversity of taxonomic groups are based on
estimates. How do we estimate this diversity? How
much is this estimate changing? How good is our
estimate?
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The 1.75 Million Described Species
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The low estimate

• Peter Raven (1985)
• 3 million species in the world
• Assumes all temperate species are described
• Acknowledged low end estimate
• How did he estimate that?
• Randomly sampled drawers in British beetle
  collection.
• 67 of species were tropical
• With 1.5 million described species
• 2/3s of those tropical, then
• Estimated that with 1 million described
  temperate species, then there are probably 2
  million tropical species

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Erwins (1982) 30 million estimate

• Fogged 19 Luehea seemannii
• Observed 1,200 species of beetles

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Erwins (1982) 30 million estimate

• Host specificity
• Beetles - predators 5 - fungivores 10, etc
• Cumulative 13.5 of species are specialists
• Estimate 162 beetle species are host-tree
  specific
• Beetles constitute 40 of all arthropods
• Or 162 beetles / 40 400 species / tree species
  
• Canopy roughly 2 x the diversity of the forest
  floor (tot600)
• 31,120 arthropods in 1 ha of tropical forest
  (52 species per hectare)
• There are an estimated 50,000 species of tropical
  trees
• 162 beetles/species x 50,000 trees 8.1 million
  beetles
• 600 sp of arthropods x 50,000 trees 30 million
  species

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Sir Robert May got at the question of how many
species by estimating the slope of the line that
describes the number of species based on body
size. Assuming we have a good estimate of larger
things, this provides us with an estimate of the
numbers of smaller things 15 million
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How many Species?

• Probably 10-15 million, but estimates vary
• A lot depends on taxonomic treatment of cryptic
  species and what constitutes a species
• Mostly invertebrates in the tropics that drives
  the current uncertainty
• The estimate could inflate a whole lot depending
  on how we deal with viruses, bacteria and fungi
• 1.75 million are described.
• The estimate is based on extrapolation
  (predicting beyond the boundary of existing data)