Mini-symposium: Climate Change and Species Range Shifts

Climate change results in the spatial displacement of some species' climatic niches and range shifts are among the clearest effects of climate change on biodiversity. This type of climate-change effect changes where certain crops can be grown, where protected areas should be located, and generally affects local species assemblages. Where a species' climatic niche disappears, the species will go extinct. A lot of effort is therefore being invested in projecting climate-change induced species range shifts.

However, even though a large amount of effort has been put into this area of research, there are a number of fundamental sources of uncertainty that keep hampering our ability to make reliable predictions. ACDI Research Chair Dr Res Altwegg has organised an ACDI event around the uncertainties of projecting species' responses to climate change, where we are at the moment, what the big gaps are, and what can and cannot be concluded from current methods.

Please join us on 10 December to attend the mini-symposium. Email Rabia Karriem at rabia.karriem@uct.ac.za to RSVP.