Yikes! Without Top Predators, CO2 Emissions Skyrocket

Wolves and bears do a lot more than hunt.

Dennis from Atlanta/Flickr

Top predators do more than regulate prey populations (think wolves and deer). They also regulate carbon dioxide emissions. At least they do in freshwater ecosystems-where if you take away the top predators CO₂ emissions rise a staggering 93 percent.

This according to a new paper in the latest Nature Geoscience that holds ramifications for a lot more than marshes. "Predators are disappearing from our ecosystems at alarming rates because of hunting and fishing pressure and because of human induced changes to their habitats," said lead author Trisha Atwood, at the University of British Columbia.

I wrote in an earlier post here on research showing how the loss of biodiversity (itself often a function of the loss of top predators) likely alters CO₂ dynamics and other issues of global change as much as greenhouse gases.

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http://climatedesk.org/2013/02/yikes-without-top-predators-co2-emissio