Geological & Meteorological Activity
- Geological (rocks) and meteorological (weather related) events affect habitat change and ecosystem distribution
- These events are not necessarily anthropogenic - they would have happened anyway, without human impact
- Although human activity may well have accelerated the rate at which such events have been occurring
- Some examples of geological and meteorological events that affect ecosystems:
El Niño
- An El Niño occurs when the sea temperatures are 0.5oC above average
- This leads to warmer than average weather in the eastern Pacific, occurring every 2-7 years
- The temperature of the ocean off the coast of Peru rises an average of 6-8oC causing thermal expansion and sea level rise
- Water off the coast of Australia and Indonesia is cooler and precipitation is reduced leading to droughts in Australia
Causes of El Niño
- In a non El Niño year there is descending air over the eastern Pacific and rising warm moist air over the western Pacific
- In an El Niño year the winds are reduced or reverse (going west to east) leading to a reversal of the conditions and rising air over the eastern Pacific and descending air over the western Pacific
Effects of El Niño
- Drought in some areas, affecting forest and wetland ecosystems
- Dying vegetation affects water drainage and acidification of the soil
- all of these changes create abiotic and biotic changes in ecosystems that can upset the balance of species within them
Continental Drift
- The science of plate tectonics puts forward a view that the main continents are always in motion
- This creates change in the distribution of important resources for life such as minerals
- Heat from the Earth's mantle is also distributed differently if there is a seismic event such as a volcano or earthquake
- All of this creates abiotic change that impacts ecosystems over the whole planet
The red dots show areas of high seismic risk; these are mainly at the edges of the tectonic plates and can cause dramatic abiotic change to ecosystems
Meteor Impact
- Whilst the majority of non man made events that have changed ecosystems are of terrestrial origin, some effects from outside Earth have been noticeable
- The best documented example is the asteroid impact which is believed to have ended the age of the dinosaurs
- A high concentration of the element iridium was found near to a known asteroid impact area called the Chicxulub crater, a crater formed around 66 million years ago off the coast of Mexico
- Iridium is extremely rare in other parts of Earth
- The fossil record shows this coincided with the mass extinction event that ended the dinosaurs' era
- The impact created clouds of hot dust and vapor that was lethal to most life forms
- The chemical composition of the soil, water and air after the impact was so different that in time, new species evolved and new ecosystems developed