{"id":225,"date":"2019-03-22T17:20:53","date_gmt":"2019-03-22T15:20:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sirius-energy.com\/blog\/?p=225"},"modified":"2019-03-22T17:20:53","modified_gmt":"2019-03-22T15:20:53","slug":"shipping-growth-will-mean-more-invasive-stowaways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sirius-energy.com\/blog\/2019\/03\/22\/shipping-growth-will-mean-more-invasive-stowaways\/","title":{"rendered":"Shipping growth will mean more invasive stowaways"},"content":{"rendered":"

The findings, which appear in Nature Sustainability<\/a><\/em>, suggest that shipping growth will far outweigh climate change in the spread of non-indigenous pests to new environments in coming decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cBiological invasions are believed to be a major driver of biodiversity change, and cause billions of dollars in economic damages annually,\u201d says senior author Brian Leung, an associate professor in McGill University\u2019s biology department and School of Environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur models show that the emerging global shipping network could yield a three-fold to 20-fold increase in global marine invasion risk between now and 2050.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hitchhiker invasion<\/h3>\n

Shipping accounts for 80 percent of world trade, and an estimated 60 percent to 90 percent of marine bio-invasions. In some cases, ships transport living organisms through ballast water. In others, species hitch a ride to new environments by attaching to the hulls of ships.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo understand how biological invasions will change, we need to understand how shipping patterns could change,\u201d says lead author Anthony Sardain, a graduate student in Leung\u2019s lab. \u201cOur study suggests that, unless appropriate action is taken, we could anticipate an exponential increase in such invasions, with potentially huge economic and ecological consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortunately, experts recognize the costs of biological invasions, with major policy initiatives such as the international Ballast Water Management Convention put in place recently, the researchers note.<\/p>\n

Biological invasions<\/h3>\n

The Convention represents the latest global effort to control bio-invasions through measures such as ballast exchange\u2014a method that has been effective at reducing invasion rates in the Great Lakes of North America. \u201cWhile it\u2019s too early to gauge the efficacy of the Convention globally, our work suggests it is in the right direction,\u201d Leung says.<\/p>\n

To project rates of global shipping traffic growth, and the consequences for biological invasions, the researchers built computer models using socioeconomic-growth scenarios developed as part of the United Nations\u2019 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.<\/p>\n

As wealth and population increase, so does demand for goods and services that aren\u2019t available locally. The wide range for increases in bio-invasion risk estimated by the models\u2014anywhere from three-fold to 20-fold\u2014stemmed from uncertainty in the underlying socioeconomic trajectories.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite this large range, all scenarios point to an increase in both shipping and invasions,\u201d Sardain notes. \u201cThat should alert us to the gravity of the situation, and the importance of measures to curtail biological invasions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada funded the work.<\/p>\n

Source: McGill University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The findings, which appear in Nature Sustainability, suggest that shipping growth will far outweigh climate change in the spread of non-indigenous pests to new environments in coming decades. \u201cBiological invasions are believed to be a major driver of biodiversity change, and cause billions of dollars in economic damages annually,\u201d says senior author Brian Leung, an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-clean-energy","8":"category-technology"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sirius-energy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/ship-and-shipping-containers_1600.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pahFMi-3D","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sirius-energy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sirius-energy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sirius-energy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sirius-energy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sirius-energy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sirius-energy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227,"href":"https:\/\/sirius-energy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions\/227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sirius-energy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sirius-energy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sirius-energy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sirius-energy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}