The impact of climate change on biodiversity in the tropics

Climate change is emerging as a major threat to biodiversity globally. Its impact on tropical Queensland and particularly its unique ecosystems, the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef and Wet Tropics rainforest, is potentially devastating.

The world is heading for a super interglacial period with warmer conditions than have been experienced for millions of years. Predicted temperatures for coastal Queensland are 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius higher by 2100 than 1990.
Higher altitude rainforest is particularly threatened because clouds are likely to shift upward. Rainforest in mountainous areas derives as much as 40 per cent of its water from passing clouds through a process known as “cloud stripping”. A predicted upward shift in the cloud base would dramatically reduce water supply and, coupled with warming, will adversely affect rainforest biodiversity.


Photo credit: JCU library
Research at JCU led by Steve Williams and Andrew Krockenberger has radically changed our views on the impacts of climate change on the fauna of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. This research predicts a dramatic loss of species and findings have received worldwide attention because they have highlighted the vulnerability of tropical and mountain ecosystems to climate change at a time when most attention was on sea level rise and impacts on temperate systems.
With a two-degree warming, the Wet Tropics ecosystem will start to unravel, with animals moving upwards to escape the heat. Research sponsored by the Marine and Tropical Sciences Research Facility (MTSRF) is exploring how resilient rainforest vertebrates are to climate change with the goal of developing adaptation strategies. Can we, for example, identify geographical areas that provide thermally buffered habitats for vulnerable species or identify species with the potential for physiological adaptation to climate change?