Human impacts on the environment are having an important effect on biodiversity. Climate change, population growth, urban expansion, food production, and changing land use are altering ecosystems in profound ways. Biodiversity is critical for Earth’s ecosystems and for human life.
Our faculty, postdocs, and students seek to study and understand the specific impacts that environmental changes, such as habitat loss and global warming, are having on species and ecosystems. Drawing on this information, they work alongside policymakers, NGOs, and other research collaborators to help identify the best strategies for protecting biodiversity, improving outcomes for endangered species, and sustaining the natural resources required for future generations.
More specifically, recent research in this area has covered such topics as forest conversion and logging, oil-palm production, the unsustainable trapping of wild animals, reforestation and other forms of ecological restoration, animal migration patterns, and agricultural land use. Their research methods and approaches encompass both ecology and the social sciences.
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Climate change poses a tremendous challenge to biodiversity conservation. Species' vulnerability to climate change depends on many factors, such as their physiology, dispersal ability, and current ranges. Our researchers are studying how climate change is affecting particular species and making projections for potential future impacts as global average temperatures continue to rise.
Populations of migratory animals are in decline around the world. Four key, human-caused threats are widely recognized as the major drivers of past and current declines: habitat loss, overexploitation, interruption of migratory pathways, and climate change. Our researchers are mapping the detailed foraging patterns of different shorebird species at stopover sites, identifying the priority areas for conservation and more broadly tracking migration patterns and changes at the global scale.
The trapping of wild animals for use as either food, products, or pets is one way that wildlife may be exploited and put at risk of extinction through human actions. As more people are moving from rural to urban areas, our researchers are investigating how this pattern of mass migration may affect species, particularly looking at how rural-to-urban migration affects the consumption rates of wild meat.
The most comprehensive assessment of biodiversity to date recently estimated that roughly 1 million species may be threatened with extinction. This is unprecedented within human history, and such a loss of species could have seriously detrimental consequences for human well-being. Our researchers are rigorously examining the actions that actually improve the survival prospects of imperiled species to help better allocate limited resources and to maximize the benefits for biodiversity.
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Coral reefs are vibrant ecosystems for marine life and provide vital environmental benefits for humanity, such as storm wave mitigation, bountiful fish stocks, and ocean-based livelihoods. They are also a global attraction for tourists, drawing millions of visitors every year and billions of dollars in tourism revenue. However, reef ecosystems…
A new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences presents the first comprehensive map of autumn stopover hotspots of landbirds for the eastern United States. Stopover sites are locations where birds pause between migratory flights in order to rest…
Since its passage in 1973, the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) has been the strongest law to prevent species extinctions in the United States, and has served as a model of conservation policy to other nations. However, the law has resulted in relatively few successes in helping species recover. Out of more than one thousand species that have…
Brian Lee, a PhD student in the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (STEP) cluster of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, was recently awarded the 2021-22 Best Student Publication Award in the College of Bioresources and Agriculture at National…
Protecting land and water is essential to preserving habitats for wildlife and mitigating harmful climate change effects. This is why many countries — as well as the U.S. federal government and state of California, have pledged to protect 30% of all land and water by 2030, also known as the “30x30” initiative.
Achieving this target at…
A new partnership between Princeton University’s Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment (C-PREE) and the High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI) is pairing students and researchers to work on solutions to today…
Great uncertainty surrounds the origins of SARS-CoV-2. Early on, some suggested a link between COVID-19 and a seafood market in Wuhan, China. Other theories are now circulating, though the origins of the virus are still unknown.
In response, governments have pushed for the closing of so-called “wet markets” around the world, but this…
People around the world, especially in developing countries in Africa, Asia, and South America, consume wild game, or bushmeat, whether out of necessity, as a matter of taste preference, or, in the case of particularly desirable wildlife species, to connote a certain social status. Bushmeat consumption, however, has devastated the populations of hundreds of wildlife species and been linked to the spread of zoological diseases such as the Ebola virus.
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