Abstract
Climate change is a long term significant change in average weather of a region. Prominent natural causes of such changes are continental wave, volcanoes, ocean current, earth’s tilt, comets, etc. Prominent human factors leading to such changes are large-scale use of fossil fuels and human migration from rural to urban areas. The small Islands developing states are least in their contribution to climate hazards group but stand first in bearing its brunt. Indian sub-continent has Andaman and Nicobar groups of Islands on east and Lakshadweep on west coast. In the Islands the climate change plays important impact on mangroves, coral reefs, capture and culture fisheries, live stocks and agriculture. There is a need for evolving an ecosystem-centric and location-specific adaptation strategies for these Islands to deal with the climate change in view of landscape, topography, physical isolation from main land and biodiversity richness.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Mimura Nobuo (1999) Vulnerability of Islands countries in the south Pacific to sea level rise and climate change. Clim Res 12:137–143
Venkataraman K, Sathyanarayana C, Alfred JRB, Wolstenhome J (2003) Hand book on hard corals of India. Zoological Survey of India, Chennai, p 266
Turner JR, Vonsden D, Klaus R, Sathyanarayana C, Fenner D, Venkataraman K, Rajan PT, Subba Rao NV (2001) Report of the phase I: remote sensing and rapid site assessment survey, April 2001. Coral reef systems of the Andaman Islands. GoI/UNDP GEF, New Delhi, p 76
Hoegh-Guldberg O (1999) Climate change, coral bleaching and the future of the world’s coral reefs. Mar Freshw Res 50:839–866
Fabricius KE (1999) Tissue loss and mortality in soft corals following mass-bleaching. Coral Reefs 18:54
Celliers L, Schleyer MH (2002) Coral bleaching on high-latitude marginal reefs at Sodwanna Bay, South Africa. Mar Pollut Bull 44:1380–1387
Whelan KRT, Miller J, Sanchez O, Patterson M (2007) Impact of the 2005 coral bleaching event on Porites porites and Colpophyllia natans at Tektite Reef, US Virgin Islands. Coral Reefs 26:689–693
Payet Rolph, Agricole Wills (2006) Climate change in the seychelles: implications for water and coral reefs. Ambio 35(4):182–189
Krishan P, Dam Roy S, Grinson George, Srivastava RC, Anand A, Murugesan S, Kaliyamoorthy M, Vikas N, Soundararajan R (2011) Elevated sea surface temperature (SST) during May 2010 induces mass bleaching of corals in Andaman: the worst since 1998. Curr Sci 100(1):111–116
Soundararajan R (2002) Mass bleaching of coral reefs in the A and N Islands in 1998. SANE Newsl 2002(6)
DamRoy S, Krishnan P, George Grinson (2006) Assessment of coral reef health using satellite data. In: Srivastava RC, Ganesh Kumar B, Jayakumar V, Domodaran T, Ravisankar N, Jeyakumar S, George Grinson, Tomar Simmi (eds) Annual report 2005–06. Central Agricultural Research Institute, Port Blair, pp 73–74
Vivekanandan E, Ali MH, Jasper B, Rajaopalan M (2009) Vulnerability of corals to warming of the Indian seas: a projection for the 21st century. Curr Sci 97(11):1654–1657
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Srivastava, R.C. Ecological Threats to an Islands Ecosystem due to Climate Change: The Andaman Experience. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., India, Sect. B Biol. Sci. 82 (Suppl 2), 335–340 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40011-012-0099-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40011-012-0099-9