If greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb, ecosystems within a century may recede at speeds greater than 1 km a year, raising the specter of mass extinctions of plant and animal species in globally important nature areas, according to a World Wide Fund for Nature report.
"Depending on species' responses to the warming, especially their ability to migrate to new sites, habitat change in many eco-regions has the potential to result in catastrophic species loss," concludes the report, authored by Jay Malcolm, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Forestry at the University of Toronto and released Thursday in Tokyo.
"There is a more serious concern in countries like Japan, and other islands with insular systems, because as (animal and plant) populations decline, it is harder for new species to arrive," Malcolm said in a telephone interview.