Durban - A study conducted by the European Commission used a supercomputer to generate a current and scientifically accurate model of Earth which predicted a mass extinction of flora and fauna within our children’s lifetimes. The model showed that over a quarter of all life on Earth will disappear within the next 80 years
No matter how scientists configured the model, the results remained the same. Mass extinction of plants and animals isn’t slowing down. It’s only growing. According to a recent piece by “Popular Mechanics”, the new study from a European Commission scientist and a professor from Australia modelled climate and land use changes and their impact on plant and animal species.
The scientists loaded up models with 33 000 virtual species that could disperse and adapt, 15 000 adaptable food webs, and even the potential of invasive species. The journal “Science Advances” published the supercomputer simulations which measured the contribution of ecological interactions on the extinction toll, modelling how “primary” extinctions triggered directly by climate and land-use change led to additional extinctions.
The simulations observed a quick decline in biodiversity between 2020 and 2050, which suggest that the next few decades are vitally important if we hope to halt and reverse the trend. The key benefits of using the supercomputer allowed the scientists to create “virtual Earths”, with the lives of plants and animals directly connected to climate, land use, and other plants and animals.
Thanks to this chain-reaction effect, biodiversity loss amplifies by up to 184%, the study says, showing how failing to account for ecological interactions leads to a severe underestimation of the current biodiversity crisis. In some of the worst simulations, up to half of the connections in the food webs between species disappeared. The larger the species, the higher up the food chain and the more vulnerable they became to effects following extinctions.
“Unless conservation practitioners rapidly start to incorporate the complexity of ecological interactions and their role in extinction processes in their planning,” the study authors write, “averting the ongoing biodiversity crisis will become an unachievable target.”
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