Climate Change – What Will Happen to Our Planet?

The abiotic factor of temperature rising due to events such a global warming could make many changes to the current ecosystems. A temperature increase in the north and south poles could cause the melting of ice caps which as a habitat in itself has a direct impact on the organisms which are adapted to survive there and only there such a polar bears. This is due to its prey, the seal, also living on the ice becoming more scarce due to increasing distances to mate and also the loss of surface to live on so many die of exhaustion. This disrupts the food chain and the polar bears have increased intraspecific competition for food and also increased energy loss from having to also swim the increased distances between the floating ice surfaces. These animals, as they are endothermic, also have physiological problems with the increased heat as they have a thick fat layer beneath the epidermis and thick insulating fur to adapt to the cold. This increases their exhaustion and fatigue when hunting because their body overheats.

Another abiotic change due to the ice melting is the increase of the sea level. This would affect the low lying land by flooding niches which would either decrease some species populations which are unable to adapt or migrate to higher land or increase species density in areas as the move inland to survive. This would increase the competition for food and territory leading into species populations decreasing and a decrease in biodiversity. With seawater moving inland the fertility of land will decrease due to the increased salinity making the water potential of the soil lower than that inside the plant making water leave the plant by osmosis and therefore the plant would die because it relies on water to photosynthesise in the light dependent reaction. This would then decrease the amount of plants in the areas, them being the producers, this would cause disruptions to most food chains reducing species populations dramatically and disturbing most food webs with the exception of xerophytic plants and species which are able to feed on them or which are in that food web. This would cause the ecosystem to be primarily the pioneer plants such as marram grass which is adapted to high salinity inland which would colonise the area then die leaving dead decomposing organic remains. This could be made into a nutrient rich soil for other species to colonise, re-increasing the species diversity until it becomes woodland in the climax stage. The trees reduce the species diversity slightly as they shade other plants and change the pH of the soil more acidic.