Climate Change Impacts on Biodiversity in Arid and Semi-Arid Areas

Abstract

Considerable attention has been paid to climate change and its impacts on biodiversity. The climate change has caused several problems such as continuous ecosystem degradation and a resultant biodiversity decline. In addition, climate warming has a range of indirect effects through changes in vegetation type level and sea that affect physical and biological systems. This has also led to changes in the distribution of species, as well as reductions in the size of populations, or even local extinctions of these populations. Moreover, many species are disappearing with time due to climate change combined with the emergence of disease that develops and increases with time. These problems affect different biodiversity components that are close to collapse. This chapter explored the richness of biodiversity in arid and semi-arid zones. It is also illuminates the effects of climate change on distribution of biodiversity. The authors highlight the responses of biodiversity under climate change, in terms of species extinction, biodiversity loss, and the impacts of climate change to ecological tourism. Finally, the authors show how biodiversity can overcome the effect of climate change, by developing some systems that allow to them to survive and conservation of species and ecosystems.